With a PhD in X-ray diffraction, Roy Pike won a Fulbright Scholarship to MIT. He then joined the theoretical physics group at the Royal Radar Establishment, Malvern, working on thermodynamics, electrochemistry and many-body quantum theory. He performed some of the first experiments in photon statistics, leading to a new field of statistical optical spectroscopy with wide scientific applications. Commercial exploitation has achieved worldwide sales of ‘Malvern’ photon-correlation equipment.

His research ranges from measurements of wind tunnel supersonic velocities, molecular parameters of colloids, proteins and viruses and sound waves in liquid helium to super-resolving optical microscopy.

Roy has won the Royal Society’s Charles Parsons Medal (1975) and, with colleagues, the MacRobert Award (1977), as well as the Annual Achievement Award of the Worshipful Company of Scientific Instrument Makers (1978), the Civil Service Award to Inventors (1980), and the Institute of Physics Guthrie Medal and Prize (1995). In 1986, Roy became Clerk Maxwell Professor of Theoretical Physics, King’s College London, and in 2000 was the founding Non-executive Chairman of web software company Stilo International.