John Frederick Nye (26 February 1923 – 8 January 2019) was the first physicist to apply plasticity to understand glacier flow. Nye's early work was on the physics of plasticity, spanning ice rheology, ice flow mechanics, laboratory ice flow measurements, glacier surges, meltwater penetration in ice, and response of glaciers and ice sheets to seasonal and climatic changes. Later in his long career, he worked extensively in optics, publishing his last paper on electromagnetic wave polarization only a few days before his death. Nye won the Chree medal and prize in 1989.