{"id":1688,"date":"2025-05-16T19:17:45","date_gmt":"2025-05-16T18:17:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blcs.eng.cam.ac.uk\/?p=1688"},"modified":"2026-01-22T18:32:32","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T18:32:32","slug":"1688","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blcs.org.uk\/?p=1688","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday milestone Professor Cyril Hilsum CBE FREng FRS"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='content-column one_half'><div id=\"attachment_1689\" style=\"width: 280px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1689\" class=\"wp-image-1689 \" src=\"https:\/\/www.blcs.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Birthday-300x175.png\" alt=\"Image says Happy Birthday in colourful letters\" width=\"270\" height=\"162\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-1689\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Happy Birthday<\/p><\/div><\/div><div class='content-column one_half last_column'><div id=\"attachment_1690\" style=\"width: 180px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1690\" class=\" wp-image-1690\" src=\"https:\/\/www.blcs.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Hilsum-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"Image of Cyril Hilsum\" width=\"170\" height=\"170\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.blcs.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Hilsum-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.blcs.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Hilsum-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.blcs.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Hilsum.jpg 550w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 170px) 100vw, 170px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-1690\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Professor Cyril Hilsum CBE FREng FRS<\/p><\/div><\/div><div class='clear_column'><\/div><br \/>\nThe British Liquid Crystal Society would like to celebrate the incredible milestone of British physicist, material scientist and Liquid Crystal legend Professor Cyril Hilsum CBE FREng FRS who turns <strong>100 YEARS OLD<\/strong> on 17<sup>th<\/sup> May 2025.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019 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 \u2018Cyril Hilsum Medal\u2019 as its mid-career award, to researchers with either academic or industrial backgrounds, for overall independent contributions to liquid crystal science and technology.<\/p>\n<p>A very happy birthday from all at the BLCS \u2013 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!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The British Liquid Crystal Society would like to celebrate the incredible milestone of British physicist, material scientist and Liquid Crystal legend Professor Cyril Hilsum CBE FREng FRS who turns 100 YEARS OLD on 17th May 2025. Professor Hilsum led the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.blcs.org.uk\/?p=1688\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blcs.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blcs.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blcs.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blcs.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blcs.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1688"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.blcs.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1756,"href":"https:\/\/www.blcs.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1688\/revisions\/1756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blcs.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blcs.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blcs.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}