Soap, Science, and Flat-Screen TVs: A History of Liquid Crystals

Liquid crystals had a controversial discovery at the end of the nineteenth century but were later accepted as a 'fourth state' of matter, and finally used throughout the world in modern displays and new materials. This book explains the fascinating science in accessible terms, and puts it into social, political, and historical perspectives.

David Dunmur received his undergraduate and postgraduate degrees from the University of Oxford. After three years as a research fellow in the newly formed Department of Theoretical Chemistry, University of Bristol, he was appointed in 1968 as a lecturer in Chemistry at the University of Sheffield, where he became Head of the Department of Chemistry from 1993 to 1996. He was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1980. In 1999 he received the George Gray Medal from the British Liquid Crystal Society. From 1996 to his retirement in 2005, he was a research Professor at the School of Chemistry, University of Southampton.

Tim Sluckin was born in London in 1951, and educated in Cambridge and Nottingham, where he received his PhD in 1975 for a thesis on the theoretical physics of liquid helium. After several postdoctoral appointments in the USA and in the UK, he was appointed a lecturer in applied mathematics at the University of Southampton in 1981. Since 1995 he has been Professor of Applied Mathematical Physics at the University of Southampton. He has also spent extended periods of sabbatical leave abroad, including spells in France (Grenoble), Italy (Milan), and Israel (Haifa). His main research interests have been in mathematical and physical aspects of liquid crystals, but he also has interests in other fluid phenomena. Another of his interests is mathematical population biology, including, in particular, problems to do with human prehistory. More recently he has also published significantly in the history of science.