Mark obtained a first class BMet degree from the Department of Metallurgy in Sheffield in 1984. Following a time with British Steel and TI Research he undertook a PhD in the School of Materials in Leeds in 1990, after which he moved as an academic to the Department of Materials in Sheffield. Mark was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1995, Reader in 1998, a Personal Chair 2000 and was appointed POSCO Professor of Iron and Steel in 2019 which he still holds toady. He was President, Royal Microscopical Society, 2006-09 and Head of Department, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, 2011-15 at Sheffield. He recently moved to being an Emeritus Professor at Sheffield. He has published 400 journal papers in high impact journals (including Nature, Nature Communications, Science, Science Advances, Acta Materialia, Scripta Materialia, Wear, Tribology International, etc). He was winner of the 2024 Bessemer Gold Medal, and winner of the IOM3 Rosenhain and Verulam Medals and gave the 2023 Hatfield Memorial Lecture. He is a Fellow Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng), Fellow Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (FIMMM), Fellow Institute of Physics (FInstP), Fellow Royal Microscopical Society (FRMS), Chartered Engineer (CEng) and Chartered Physicist (CPhys). Rainforth has worked in tribology for 40 years and is internationally recognised in the understanding of tribological mechanisms. A common theme has been the use of high-resolution characterisation techniques to understand the friction induced surface microstructural changes in a range of ceramics and metal alloys. The formation of “tribolayers” on the surface of tribological components has often been observed and is anecdotally considered beneficial. Rainforth’s work has shown the exact conditions (galvanic, surface stresses) required to form such films and explained the mechanisms by which such films reduce both wear and friction. Similarly, the precise role that surface oxides on metallic materials play on passivation and surface deformation, and therefore on friction and wear, has been identified for a range of materials. This is important in the current debate on the reasons for the high failure rates in some metal-on-metal hip replacements. Rainforth has led the development of new materials for tribological applications, including aluminium composites for automotive applications, tool steels for work rolls, nanoscale coatings for component wear protection and a range of new ceramic composites. For example, his work he developed new alumina/zirconia ceramics with trace additions that significantly improved wear resistance and resistance to hydrothermal degradation, which feed into the design of the 4th generation zirconia toughened alumina ceramics by Ceramtec. He has presented at the International Wear of Materials Conferences for the last 32 years, giving Keynotes on tribology a wide range of conferences (Gordon Conference (2), World Tribology Congress (2), Faraday Discussions and many more).