Sir Michael Pepper is a pioneer of the study of low-dimensional electron gas systems and associated quantum effects. He founded the Semiconductor Physics Research Group at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge University, where he started a long collaboration with the late Sir Nevill Mott, (Nobel Laureate, 1977) using semiconductor devices to investigate fundamental physics. Sir Michael is a Fellow of the Royal Society and of Trinity College. He has been awarded the Hughes Medal and the Royal Medal of The Royal Society and the first Mott Medal of the Institute of Physics, as well as the Guthrie (Gold) Medal and the Europhysics Prize of the European Physical Society, and the Gold Medal of the Institute of Physics for Business and Innovation. He was knighted for services to physics in 2006.