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2010 Prizes of the British Liquid Crystal Society

Martin Schadt is the 2010 recipient of the G.W. Gray Medal awarded by the British Liquid Crystal Society for seminal contributions to the field. He is surely best known to the community for his invention of the twisted nematic (TN) cell together with Wolfgang Helfrich in 1970. But this was by far not his only contribution. For example, Martin Schadt was also to propose the first OLED in 1969, the Kerr effect in liquid crystals (1972), now used in the novel fast switching Blue Phase displays, dual frequency addressing in 1982, or deformed helix ferroelectrics (DHF) in 1989. Together with Russian co-workers, he pioneered photo alignment as an alternative to traditional rubbing techniques, and worked on the molecular design of new classes of commercially relevant liquid crystals.
Martin Schadt was the head of the LC research division of La Roche until 1994, and CEO of Rolic until 2002. He officially retired in 2005, but is still active as scientific advisor. Martin Schadt has received numerous prizes and awards, published more than 160 scientific papers, but maybe more importantly filed more than 100 patents. It is a real pleasure for me to congratulate him on receiving the Gray medal.

The 2010 C. Hilsum Medal was awarded to Mike Hird for his sustained contributions to liquid crystal science and technology. Mike largely contributed to the synthesis of fluoro-substituted liquid crystals for negative dielectic nematics, and founded the basis for the underlying materials now used in most vertically aligned nematic (VAN) displays. Also his work on difluoro-terphenyls in high resistivity ferroelectric liquid crystal displays is highly regarded, and has found its way into applications such as viewfinders in digital cameras. Mike also worked on high birefringence materials for telecommunication devices, and discotic nematics for retardation films to improve the viewing angle of laptop and TV screens. Well deserved congratulations to him too.

Ingo Dierking
Editor, Liquid Crystals Today

Other news items

Volume 18, Issue 2

• 2009 Freedericsz Medal Awarded to Professor Yu M. Yevdokimov
• Special issue of Liquid Crystals in honour of Pierre-Gilles de Gennes
• Helen Gleeson awarded an OBE by the Queen
• Professor Geoffrey R. Luckhurst - Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy

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