Victor Veselago

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Victor G. Veselago (born 1929, in Ukrainian SSR, USSR) - Russian physicist who, in 1967, theoretically envisioned negative permittivity negative permeability materials. Only much later such materials were actually manufactured thanks to the work of Prof. John Pendry (Imperial College, London) and Prof. David Smith (University of California in San Diego), giving birth to a new field of research (metamaterials). Such materials are not 'natural' materials but are artificially engineered nanostructures that, at given frequencies, show negative permeability and permittivity.

Remarkably, these materials can have a negative refractive index. This allows them to focus near field light thus creating a perfect or "super"-lens.

There is active work on improving silicon lithography using superlenses made of these metamaterials.