Conference Report

Conference report: Annual Conference of the BLCS 2007

The 21st Annual Conference of the British Liquid Crystal Society was held from 28-30 March 2007 at The University of Sheffield. The meeting was organised by Goran Ungar and his group of the Department of Engineering Materials. The three day conference followed the general format with invited and oral presentations and a poster session on Thursday afternoon. This year the invited talks were presented by Steve Elston, Mikhail Osipov, and John Seddon, complemented by an interesting programme of a further 16 oral contributions, covering the whole field of liquid crystal research. This ranged from phase transitions and polar effects, self-assembly and synthesis, to lyotropic phases and liquid crystal properties and applications. During the poster session some 42 contributions reported the latest research and allowed for lively and interesting scientific discussions.

Photo 1: Prof. Robert B. Meyer during his speech after receiving the GW Gray medal. To the left is Prof. Helen Gleeson, Vice-chairman of the British Liquid Crystal Society, and to the right, Prof. Carsten Tschierske, the 2007 Sturgeon lecturer.

This year’s Sturgeon Lecture, given in memory of Ben Sturgeon, one of the pioneers of liquid crystal applications, was presented by Prof. Carsten Tschierske from the Institute of Organic Chemistry of the Martin-Luther-University, Halle, Germany. He reported on the recent advances in “Designing New Mesophase Morphologies”, a fascinating account of complex liquid crystalline superstructures formed from T-shaped molecules with different chemical moieties. Dr. Paul Brimicombe was presented with the ‘Young Scientist of the Year Award’ for his work on novel fast switching nematic device geometries, supervised by Peter Raynes and Steve Elston at Oxford University. The British Liquid Crystal Society (BLCS) awards two prestigious prizes: the GW Gray medal and the Cyril Hilsum medal. These awards were presented during the conference dinner on Thursday evening. It was with obvious pleasure that Helen Gleeson presented the GW Gray medal to Prof. Robert B. Meyer (photo 1). Bob Meyer surely is one of the outstanding figures in liquid crystal research, having discovered practically all polar effects in liquid crystals, besides his numerous other valuable contributions to the field. The award of the Gray medal recognises Bob Meyer’s lifelong contributions to the field of liquid crystals.

The Cyril Hilsum medal was awarded to Dr. Cliff Jones (photo 2), one of the co-inventors and the founder of ZBD Displays Ltd. (Zenithal Bistable Displays). Cliff Jones has to date had an intriguing career as researcher and entrepreneur in liquid crystal displays and is recognised for his valuable contributions to the LCD industry.

Photo 2: Dr Cliff Jones during his speech after receiving the Cyril Hilsum medal.

Over the years, it has become a tradition to close the BLCS meeting with an invited oral contribution presented by John Lydon. Somewhat miraculously, every year John comes up with a talk, which is not only interesting and stimulating from a historic point of view, but also eloquent, entertaining and humorous in presentation. This year we learned about ‘The Prehistory of Discotic Phases’. And as usual, the audience was widely anticipating his liquid crystal related poem to provide the appropriate finish to his talk. ….. and like every year, the audience was not disappointed.

The British liquid crystal community enjoyed a well organised meeting in Sheffield, with an interesting and very stimulating programme. We certainly would encourage members of the international LC community to join and attend our meetings in the future. The 2008 Annual Conference of the British Liquid Crystal Society will be held at the University of East Anglia in Norwich from 17-19 March, and will be organised by Andrew Cammidge.

Date: June 2007

Dr Ingo Dierking
School of Physics & Astronomy
University of Manchester

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