Editorial

Dear colleagues,

A bit belated, but here it is, the next issue of Liquid Crystals Today.

At first, it is to mention that the liquid crystal community has lost one of its long standing researchers in the field of applications of LC materials, Prof Harry J Coles, Emeritus Professor of Photonics at the University of Cambridge, who passed away in the summer of last year. An obituary written by Stephen Morris summarises Harry’s career.

The research article of this issue is another one of our Glenn Brown award contributions. The paper by Jung-Shen Benny Tai provides an overview of the interesting topic of topological solitons in chiral liquid crystals, a topic which has attracted interest far beyond liquid crystals, also in other fields of physics. The contribution provides a review of the latest developments in the field, and I hope that you enjoy reading it.

Further contributions to this issue are based on public outreach by means of liquid crystals, as shown by several different groups in the UK and in Spain. In a collaborate effort the theoreticians at Glasgow and Strathclyde universities, as well as the experimentalists from Nottingham Trent University have developed a liquid crystal-based science demonstration, for the public, which was taken to several events, The Glasgow Science Festival, Science in the Park in Nottingham, the Festival of Science and Curiosity at Mansfield, and finally a presentation of the events at the House of Commons in London. A number of the demonstrated effects are discussed in the paper.

Alessandro Patti and his team, computational scientists by trade, gave an introduction of liquid crystals to several groups of interested high school students within the framework of the Andalusian Science Week. Beside an explanation of the basics of the liquid crystal state, also current research is discussed in laymen’s terms, particularly an international collaboration to unveil the nature of the biaxial nematic phase.

Of course, the issue of LC Today would not be complete without the latest Research News, giving you some suggestions for reading of the latest literature highlights.

At last, a few reminders of the upcoming conferences for this year. The largest meeting is of course the International Liquid Crystal Conference, ILCC 2024, from 21 to 26 July 2024 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. More information about deadline and program and be found at https://ilcc2024.com/.

This years German Liquid Crystal Conference, GLCC2024, will be held at the University of Duisburg-Essen, from 13 to 15 March 2024, Essen, Germany. You can find further information at https://www.uni-due.de/chemie/akgiese/glcc2024.php. This will be the 50^th anniversary meeting of this conference, which goes back to 1971 and was formerly known as the Freiburger Arbeitstagung Flüssigkristalle with 30 participants and 5 oral presentations at its inaugural workshop.

The annual meeting of the British Liquid Crystal Society, BLCS2024, will take place at the University of Oxford from 10 to 12 April 2024 in Oxford, UK; http://blcs.eng.cam.ac.uk/.

Another traditional meeting is the Polish-Czech Seminar: Structural and Ferroelectric Phase Transitions, which takes place from 6 to 10 May 2024 in Poznan, Poland. Information is to be found at the following webpage: https://www.ifmpan.poznan.pl/pol-cze-24/.

And the SPIE Optics+Photonics Liquid Crystal Conference will be held in San Diego, CA, USA from 18 to 22 August 2024. More information at Liquid Crystal Conference LCXXVIII.

I hope you enjoy this issue, and it might motivate a few colleagues to either start participating in outreach programmes, or if they already do, to let the community know by sending me a contribution about their effort.