Happy Birthday

Professor Cyril Hilsum CBE FREng FRS

Professor Hilsum led the RSRE/University of Hull/BDH team which invented the first stable liquid crystals (the cyanobiphenyls). These, supplied worldwide, made possible numerous new and improved electronic systems, including the laptop computer. He made many personal contributions, including the first LCD pixel driven by amorphous silicon thin film transistors, the basis of LCD televisions today. Without Professor Hilsum and colleagues’ efforts in the early days of liquid crystal devices, the field may not have developed into what it is today, so we as a community owe him a lot. The BLCS continues to honour the contributions made by Prof Hilsum by awarding the ‘Cyril Hilsum Medal’ as its mid-career award, to researchers with either academic or industrial backgrounds, for overall independent contributions to liquid crystal science and technology.

A very happy birthday from all at the BLCS – congratulations on reaching this incredible milestone and thank you for the priceless contributions and wisdom you have shared with the LC community over the last century!

For more information, please visit the meeting website 2025 BLCS Annual Meeting.

*New extended deadlines*
Abstract submission: closing date Friday 28th February 2025
Registration: closing date Monday 10 March 2025

Emeritus Professor Richard Bushby

It with great sadness that we write to inform you that Professor Richard Bushby, an Emeritus Professor and former Professor of Physical Organic Chemistry in the School of Chemistry at the University of Leeds, has passed away peacefully in his sleep following a short illness.

A prominent and inspirational figure in the British and International Liquid Crystal Communities, Richard had a remarkable academic career. Following his D.Phil with ERH Jones and GH Whitham at Oxford, Richard took up the role of Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at Queen Mary College London, and then Joined Yale University, working with JA Berson, as a NATO Postdoctoral Fellow. He then started his independent academic career in 1970 at Leeds as Lecturer in Organic Chemistry, rising through the ranks to be appointed as Professor of Physical Organic Chemistry in 1998, and Research Professor in 2004.

A prominent and inspirational figure in the British and International Liquid Crystal Communities, Richard had a remarkable academic career. Following his D.Phil with ERH Jones and GH Whitham at Oxford, Richard took up the role of Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at Queen Mary College London, and then Joined Yale University, working with JA Berson, as a NATO Postdoctoral Fellow. He then started his independent academic career in 1970 at Leeds as Lecturer in Organic Chemistry, rising through the ranks to be appointed as Professor of Physical Organic Chemistry in 1998, and Research Professor in 2004.

From being a hands-on synthetic organic chemist, he widened the scope of his work to include the synthesis and examination of the properties of the first generation of discotic materials – and then extended further, in conjunction with a team of soft matter physicists to explore the potential of liquid crystalline materials for a variety of medical and commercial roles.

Richard Bushby was very much part of pioneering research at the boundary between Organic Chemistry and Condensed Matter Physics – examining exotic properties such as the magnetism of high-spin polymers, the self-ordering and conductivity of discotic liquid crystals and the self-assembly of complex multi-component systems involving surface alignment on prepared substrates.

The emphasis of some of Richard’s most recent research has shifted to what is perhaps the most exciting new frontier of Liquid Crystal science; the challenge of creating novel biological and chemical sensors. His work at the University of Leeds led to several early breakthroughs in understanding the interplay between surface alignment and anchoring energy at the interface between LCs and surfactants.

We would like to extend our sincerest condolences to his family, colleagues and all who knew him.

Interested people attending the event talk to our LC experts.

The event took place at the Riverside Museum in Glasgow, where the history of transportation in Glasgow surrounded our stall. We spent the day transporting museum visitors, away from the old subway carriages and buses, into the world of liquid crystals.

We had three main activities; a portable microscope focused on the liquid crystal display of an old iPad, a table of chiral nematic liquid crystal thermochromic sensors, and an isotropic droplet race. The portable microscope, purchased with money provided by the BLCS outreach fund, illuminated the pixels of the iPad. The detail of the sub-pixel domain was visible, and visitors focused the microscope on different colours on the iPad screen, causing an immediate and interactive change in the pixels displayed on the microscope. The thermochromic sensors allowed us to interactively move from the nematic phase into a chiral nematic phase. The colour changes induced by splatting a hand or fingering on the sensors were explained in terms of the unwinding of the helical order.

Our final exhibit, the excitingly named droplet race, took a slightly different and isotropic route. Akhshay had coated half of a glass plate with a hydrophobic coating made of silicon nanoparticles, and the other half was left uncoated. Children (and a few adults, including the BLCS chair, Nigel Mottram) had fun picking sides before dispensing droplets of food colouring onto their chosen side. The droplets on the hydrophobic side bounced to the finish line, while the droplets on the uncoated side turned into a slow-moving trickle and promptly lost the race.

We finally tied the liquid crystal and the droplets together, talking to visitors about our ongoing work on the Control of free-surface flow morphologies in anisotropic liquids.

Further information about our project can be found in the outreach article we published last year with Futurum (https://doi.org/10.33424/FUTURUM287). Overall, the event was a great success, with around a hundred children, parents, BLCS Chairs, and adults with learning difficulties visiting our stall. We want to say a big thank you to the support of the BLCS and the EPRSC for allowing us to host this event.

Joseph Cousins (Joseph.Cousins@glasgow.ac.uk) and Akhshay Bhadwal (akhshay.bhadwal@ntu.ac.uk)

Information about the BLCS Outreach fund can be found on the BLCS webpages

We are pleased to announce that a one-day meeting will be held at the University of Birmingham on 20 June 2023 on the theme of “Liquid-Crystal Research in the 2020s”. The meeting, supported by the British Liquid Crystal Society (BLCS),  is intended for early-stage researchers, primarily for PhD students, but also for post-doctoral research associates and researchers in industry, who are relatively new to the field of liquid-crystal research, irrespective of their academic disciplines.

In the absence of the BLCS Annual Training Workshop this year in the traditional format, some introductory materials for education and training will be made available to the participants on an online platform before the one-day meeting for a limited period. The one-day meeting (from 11 am to 5 pm) will provide opportunities for presenting posters and networking.

Confirmed speakers include:

1. Helen Gleeson | University of Leeds
2. Mark R. Wilson | Durham University
3. Dr Guy Bryan-Brown | New Vision Display
4. Jon Preece | University of Birmingham and ChromaTwist

Expressions of interest in the prescribed format (see the next page) are currently invited for attending this one-day meeting in June. Please email your expression of interest to blcs-atw@contacts.bham.ac.uk by 9 June 2023. Please send your expression of interest as soon as possible – places are limited.

Accepted participants will be notified shortly after the deadline. There are no registration fees for accepted participants.

The BLCS is now seeking nominations onto the steering committee. The following BLCS committee positions are now available:

• Treasurer – the elected person will be Treasurer-elect from the date of the election until the Annual Meeting in March/April in 2024, when they will become Treasurer for three years.
• Ordinary Members – those elected will serve for just under three years from the date of the election until the Annual Meeting in March/April 2026.
• Chair-elect – the elected person will be Chair-elect from the date of the election until the Annual Meeting in March/April 2024 when they will take over as Chair for two years, and then be Vice-Chair for a further year.

Both nominees and nominators (proposer & seconder) must be members of the Society and the permission of the nominee must be obtained. Nominations should be made by email. The Nomination form can be found on the last page of this letter which you can download from this link: committee nominations.

The timeline for the election process is as follows:

• 14^th April – Nominations open.
• 12^th May – Nominations close.
• 19^th May – Members will be told of the nominees for each post and online voting begins.
• 9^th June – Voting ends.
• 16^th June – Announcement of successful nominees.

The details of the online voting will be released in due course.

We acknowledge that this election is unusual due to the previous elections during the Covid19 outbreak, which have forced a change in timings, and that the next terms of office will aim to return us to the normal timetable (i.e. election deadline at the Annual meeting each year).

We very much look forward to meeting you in Glasgow next year. For more information, please visit the following sites:

• BLCS23 homepage:
  https://www.gla.ac.uk/events/conferences/blcs2023/
• Abstract submission (extended deadline 20th February 2023): https://www.gla.ac.uk/events/conferences/blcs2023/abstracts/
• Registration (Deadline for Registration is 3rd April 2023.  )
  https://www.gla.ac.uk/events/conferences/blcs2023/registration/