John Orton won an Exhibition at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he obtained an honours degree in Physics, followed by a D Phil, with a thesis on Electron Spin Resonance in magnesium oxide. He joined Mullard (later Philips) Research Laboratories in 1960 to work on the development of the microwave maser. In 1968 he lead the Group responsible for developing compound semiconductor devices and continued to work in various aspects of semiconductor research, one of his principal interests being in the use of Molecular Beam Epitaxy to grow low-dimensional semiconductor structures. from 1989 to 1991 he was Visiting Professor in Nottingham. He was active within the Institute of Physics, serving on the Solid State Physics Committee, the Semiconductor Physics Committee and on the Editorial Board of J Phys D (Applied Physics). In 1991 he took up the Chair of Optoelectronics in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Nottingham.
Tom Foxon obtained his B.Sc. in Physics at King's College, London and his Ph.D. in Materials Science in, at Battersea College. In 1969 he joined the Mullard (now Philips) Research Laboratories where he started the first work in Europe on MBE growth of III-V compounds. In 1987 he was appointed as a Visiting Professor in the Physics Department of the Technical University in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. In October 1991, he was appointed to his present post as a Professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Nottingham, where in collaboration with Prof John Orton he set up the first work in Europe on the growth of group III-Nitride by MBE. He is currently Chairman of the UK Nitride Consortium, a member of the UK MBE group, a member of the EPSRC Peer Review College, a Fellow of the IOP, was President of the British Association for Crystal Growth (2006-2009) and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2006.