28 May 2002

Bookham Technology founder wins top Academy accolade

Dr Andrew Rickman, Chairman of fibre-optic component manufacturer Bookham Technology plc, has won a prestigious Royal Academy of Engineering Silver Medal for his outstanding contribution to British engineering. He received the solid silver medal at the Academy Awards Dinner in London last night (27 May).

Dr Rickman, aged 42, founded the Abingdon-based company in 1988 to capitalise on the explosion in demand for bandwidth that he anticipated, well before the communication boom really took off. He realised that there was a yawning gap in the market for components that could combine computing power with controlling light signals and set about finding the technology to solve the problem. Working with top university researchers, Bookham came up with ASOC, a way of integrating processing and fibre-optic functions on a single silicon wafer. The key advance was a rib-waveguide that conducts light around the circuit - and the beauty of using silicon is that it is the best-characterised engineering material on earth.

"Traditional fibre-optic networking components were bulky devices with lots of different parts to integrate optical, analogue and digital technologies," says Dr Rickman. "We can achieve the same functionality in a single silicon chip and we can do it cheaper because we use the techniques that the semiconductor industry spent billions developing."

Dr Rickman's vision is being borne out as copper wire is ripped out all over the world in favour of fibre-optic cable to fuel our insatiable demand for more bandwidth. Bookham Technology started making its revolutionary new chips in 1998 and now supplies many major communications providers, including Nortel, Lucent and Fujitsu. The company acquired Marconi's optical components business in February 2002 and now employs 850 people. Bookham has manufacturing facilities in Abingdon, Swindon and Caswell in the UK as well as in Maryland, USA. Bookham listed on the Nasdaq index and the London Stock Exchange in 2000.

ends

Notes for editors

1. The Academy's Silver Medals were instigated in 1995. They are awarded annually to engineers who have made outstanding contributions to British engineering. Candidates must be aged under 50. Up to four medals may be awarded each year.
   
   
2. This year's other Silver Medals go to Nader Azarmi, head of the BTexact Intelligent Systems team at Adastral Park, Ipswich; Professor Richard Friend, Cavendish Professor of Physics at the University of Cambridge and Chief Scientist of Cambridge Display Technology Ltd; and Colin Smith, Rolls-Royce Director of Engineering and Technology - Civil Aerospace, based in Derby.
   
   
3. The Royal Academy of Engineering aims to pursue, encourage and maintain excellence across the whole field of engineering in order to promote the advancement of the science, art and practice of engineering for the benefit of the public. The Academy comprises the UK's most eminent engineers and is able to use their combined wealth of knowledge and experience to meet its objectives.
   

For more information please contact:

Jane Sutton at the Royal Academy of Engineering
tel: 020 7227 0536 (direct), mobile: 07989 513045, email: jane...@...org.uk

or

Sharon Ostaszewska at Bookham Technology
Tel. 01235 837000; email: sharon.ostaszewska@bookham.com

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