[9] Friend was educated at Rugby School and Trinity College, Cambridge,[6] gaining a PhD in 1979 under the supervision of Abe Yoffe.

He is one of the principal investigators in the new Cambridge-based Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration (IRC) on nanotechnology and co-founder of Cambridge Display Technology (CDT) and Plastic Logic.

He established the pressure/temperature phase diagrams for transition metal dichalcogenides, showing conditions for CDW (Charge Density Wave) phases and superconducting phases in TaS2, band crossing transition in TiS2 intercalation of transition metal dichalcogenides with various Lewis bases (alkali metals, amines), and use of controlled charge transfer to the host layer to fine-tune electronic structure to establish conditions for CDW superlattice formation, and mechanisms for charge transport.

He has made a major contribution to understanding the conditions for metallic, superconducting, magnetic and insulating ground states in organic charge transfer salts.

First construction of MOSFET (Metal Insulator Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor) with polyacetylene as active semiconductor, and demonstration of novel mechanism of operation, with novel behaviour and made the first construction of efficient, large area, polymeric semi-conductor LED's (Light Emitting Diodes), based on polyphenylene-vinylene.