ITHACA, N.Y. -- Richard Friend, a University of Cambridge physicist who recently was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II, has been named the Mary Shepard B. Upson Visiting Professor at Cornell University.

During his residence, Friend will give lectures and collaborate with Department of Materials Science and Engineering faculty on teaching and research. He will present his first free, public lecture Oct. 28 at 4 p.m. in 155 Olin Hall. His subject will be "Organic semiconductor heterojunctions: Electricity to light and light to electricity." Other lectures will be given Monday, Nov. 3, when he will discuss organic semiconductors, and Monday, Nov. 24, when he will talk on polymer electronics, both at 4 p.m. in B11 Kimball Hall.

Friend is the inventor of a polymer electronics technology known as plastic logic. In 2000 he and his Cavendish Laboratory colleagues, Henning Sirringhaus and Takeo Kawase, founded a company, Plastic Logic, to commercialize their patented method for printing circuits made from polymers so they can be sprayed onto anything, and without the need for clean rooms.

Friend pioneered the study of organic polymers as semiconductors, and he has shown that these materials can be used in a wide range of semiconductor devices, including light emitting diodes, transistors and photocells. He also is one of the principal investigators in Britain's Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration on Nanotechnology. He is chief scientist and co-founder of Cambridge Display Technology.

He has been on the faculty in the Department of Physics at Cambridge since 1980 and has published more than 600 papers on organic semiconductors and related research areas and is named as inventor on more than 20 patents and patent applications. Between 1990 and 1999 he was the most-cited scientist based in the United Kingdom in the field of physical sciences.

The Upson visiting professorship was established in 1966 through the bequest of the widow of Maxwell M. Upson, an 1899 Cornell engineering graduate and a member of the Cornell board of trustees for 35 years.

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