Research Areas:
Functional & Quantum Materials

Sir Anthony K. CHEETHAM received his PhD from the University of Oxford in 1971 and conducted postdoctoral work in the Materials Physics Division at Harwell. In 1974, he joined the chemistry faculty at Oxford, and then moved to the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) in 1991 as a Professor in the Materials Department. He directed UCSB's new Materials Research Laboratory from 1992 to 2004 and then became the Director of the International Center for Materials Research at UCSB in 2004. In 2007, he moved to the University of Cambridge to become the Goldsmiths’ Professor of Materials Science. He returned to UCSB in 2017 and is currently a Professor Emeritus and Research Professor of Materials Research Laboratory and of the Materials Department. He is also an Honorary Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Sir Anthony is widely known for his work on the synthesis and characterization of functional inorganic and hybrid materials. His early work focuses on the development of methods by which unknown crystal structures could be obtained from polycrystalline materials using high-resolution synchrotron X-ray and neutron powder diffraction. These methods, complemented by magic-angle spinning NMR and electron microscopy, were applied to a wide range of new materials, including aluminosilicate zeolites, nanoporous nickel phosphates, new materials for natural gas conversion, and phosphors for solid state lighting. His later work in the area of both porous and dense metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) has led to the discovery of multiferroic and amorphous/glassy MOFs, as well as lead-free hybrid perovskites for optoelectronic applications.

Elected a Fellow of the UK Royal Society in 1994, Sir Anthony also served as its Treasurer and Vice-President from 2012 to 2017. He is a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Fellow/Foreign Member of the Academia Europaea, the German National Academy of Sciences, the Singapore National Academy of Science and the Indian National Science Academy, to name a few. His numerous accolades include the Blaise Pascal Chair (1997), the IUMRS Sômiya Award (2004), the Platinum Medal of the IOM³ (2011), the Chemical Pioneer Award from the American Institute of Chemists (2014), the International Medal for Materials Science and Technology Award from Materials Research Society of India (2017), and the Sheikh Saud International Prize for Materials Science (2022). In January 2020, he was knighted by the Queen Elizabeth II for his “Services to Materials Chemistry, UK Science and Global Outreach”.