John D. Humphery was born on September 4, 1945. He obtained the Higher National Diploma in Applied Physics at Portsmouth Polytechnic in 1972.After a year in the defence industry, he joined the National Institute of Oceanography, working with shore-based wave recorders. In 1974, he transferred to the Taunton Laboratory of the Institute of Oceanographic Sciences. There, he worked with Waverider buoys to assess the feasibility of wave power generation around the UK coasts. Since 1985, he has worked at the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory. Nearly all his work involves measurement in the marine environment, but especially wave current seabed interactions with STABLE.