Brian Kidd Ridley FRS (2 March 1931 – 22 May 2024) was a British solid-state physicist specialising in semiconductor theory.
[4][6] Ridley conducted work on negative differential resistance (NDR), instabilities and hot-electron transport in semiconductors.
He has made original contributions to the theory of electron transitions in solids, particularly impurity scattering and multiphonon processes.
[6][7] He wrote three popular books, Time, Space and Things (1976), which has been translated into multiple languages, The Physical Environment (1979) and On Science (2001).
[7] In 2001, the Institute of Physics awarded him the Dirac Medal in recognition of his four-decade long influence on the semiconductor theory.