Frank Reginald Nunes Nabarro MBE OMS FRS[1] (7 March 1916 – 20 July 2006) was an English-born South African physicist and one of the pioneers of solid-state physics, which underpins much of 21st-century technology.

Born 7 March 1916 in London, UK, into a Sephardi Jewish family, he studied at Nottingham High School, then at New College, Oxford where he obtained a first-class honours degree in physics in 1937 and another in mathematics in 1938.

At the University of Bristol his work under Professor Nevill Francis Mott, a future Nobel Laureate in physics, earned him the Oxford degree of BSc (then equivalent to an MSc elsewhere).

(See also Egon Orowan) At the outbreak of World War II, Nabarro became involved in the aerial defence of London and joined the Army Operational Research Group, headed by then Brigadier B. F. J. Schonland.

He predicted the existence and magnitude of diffusional creep and improved Peierls' estimate of the stress required to move a dislocation through a perfect lattice named the Peierls–Nabarro force after the two.

The then Vice-Chancellor, Prof. D J du Plessis, was already planning, from 1978 onwards, the "transformation" of the university which would occur once the government allowed it to enroll students of all races.

He was an avid reader of Marcel Proust, and had an enduring love of classical music, which he shared with his wife Margaret, who was a noted ethno-musicologist.

He was Honorary President of the Johannesburg Musical Society, and in memory of his wife, he established the Margaret Dalziel Nabarro Chamber Concert Fund.