My way to George Gray and liquid crystal polymers

Abstract

This article has allowed me the pleasant opportunity to recall the outstanding scientist and remarkable person – Professor George Gray – who played an important role in my scientific career. My first acquaintance with George was virtual, only thanks to his monograph ‘Molecular Structure and the Properties of Liquid Crystals’ (1962), which triggered the development of liquid crystals science in many countries, including the former Soviet Union. However, our first face to face meeting was held in 1981 during the Liquid Crystal Conference in Tbilisi – the capital of the Georgian Republic of Soviet Union. This personal acquaintance laid the foundations of our long term friendship, based not only on the mutual scientific interest of liquid crystals, but also on the merely (pure) human warm relationship. This article describes the evolution of our relationship starting with my visit to Hull University in 1984 and our further meetings at the European and International Conferences in the period 1987–2002. The most impressive research of George’s activity is associated with the synthesis of cyanobiphenyl derivatives and his fundamental approach to the synthesis of liquid crystalline polysiloxanes with the side mesogenic groups; these are discussed in detail. The principle of creation of liquid crystalline (LC) ‘comb-shaped’ (side chain LC) polymers suggested by us in seventies in comparison with the preparation of LC polysiloxanes are considered. The Author of this article is extremely grateful for the opportunity to have met Prof. George Gray who was a humble person and whose warm and welcoming smile will be forever preserved in my memory.

Keywords:

• liquid crystals
• liquid crystalline (LC) polymers
• synthesis
• cyanobiphenyl compounds
• LC displays
• comb-shaped polymers
• photo-controllable LC polymers

Acknowledgement

Author is very grateful to Ms. Svetlana Amelekhina for her assistance in the manuscript preparation, Dr. Olga Arzhakova, and Mr. Pavel Shibayev for helping out with English translation.

Notes

1. When Chistyakov passed away in 1982, Prof. Lev Blinov from NIOPIK became the Head of Laboratory in the Institute of Crystallography. At the present time, this laboratory is headed by Prof. Sergey Palto.

2. Presently, Ekaterinburg.

3. Some historical information concerning the studies on liquid crystals can be found in the books.[19,32]

4. In our opinion for the first time, this name was introduced by Prof. A. Sonin in his book ‘Centaurs of Nature’ [20] and later I adopted the term in my publications.[33,34]

5. Here I use the old terminology usually used in political editions (new papers, journals, and TV programmes), according to which all countries were divided into ‘socialist’ and ‘capitalist’.

6. The British Council is the UK’s international organisation for educational opportunities and scientific and cultural relations.

7. I do not want my reader to doubt my words, so I would like to note that throughout all my trips abroad I usually have with me small notebooks which fit into my jacket’s pocket. In my notebooks, I write down all the interesting facts. You can see a page torn from one of my notebooks here on the picture. 1984.

8. The scientific works of Professor Gray have won him fame because of the huge success of the liquid crystals. The success of LCs was huge. Hull University, RSRE, and BDH Chemicals shared the Qucen’s Award for technological achievements in 1979 and Gray with his colleagues from this establishment received the Rank Prize for Optoelectronics in 1980. He was a personal chair in Organic Chemistry in 1978 (he had been reader in Organic Chemistry at Hull since 1965) and was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society in 1983.

9. Prof. Victor Titov (1935–1996) – General director of NIOPIK (1981–1987), director of Research and Development Institute of Polygrafia (1991–1996), Chairman of the Russian Liquid Crystalline Society

10. In 1992, this book was translated into Russian by the group of scientists under my editorship ‘Liquid Crystalline Polymers with Side Mesogenic Groups’ К.МcArdle (edited by V.P. Shibaev), Moscow, Mir.[35]

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Russian Scientific Fund [grant number 14-13-00379].