Figures & data
Figure 1. Left: Glenn Brown. Middle: The Liquid Crystal Institute at Kent (1965). Right: Program cover of the first ILCC (1965).
Figure 2. Lam outside of residence in Vancouver, near the UBC campus—first photo outside of Hong Kong and first snow in life (1965).
Figure 3. The organizing committees of the 1st and 2nd ILCC Citation[2].
![Figure 3. The organizing committees of the 1st and 2nd ILCC Citation[2].](/cms/asset/fd85ccfe-f50d-43c3-9301-9814e7fc6a8b/gmcl_a_1289627_f0003_oc.gif)
Table 1. Timeline of important events in liquid crystal developments and the life trajectory of Lui Lam, 1965-1990.
Figure 4. Number of papers presented at the first 13 ILCCs, 1965–1990. (Data source: Program book of the 13th ILCC, Vancouver, 1990.)
Figure 5. Lam in his office, Room 518, main building, Institute of Physics, Beijing (1978).
Figure 6. Lam and his two colleagues from the Institute of Physics in Lushan (Aug. 1978), who became academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Yu Lu went on to win The American Institute of Physics (AIP) 2007 Tate Medal for Leadership in International Physics.
Figure 7. Lam with Tsinghua's LC group, on the occasion of Ou-Yang Zhong-Can's PhD thesis defense (July 2, 1984). Xie Yu-Zhang (1915–2011) was the thesis advisor. Xie, together with Zhao Jian-An and Ruan Liang, and I founded the Chinese Liquid Crystal Society in summer 1980.
Figure 8. Program covers of three ILCCs: the 8th (Kyoto, 1980), 12th (Freiburg, 1988) and 13th (Vancouver, 1990). Note that the spelling of my family name switched back from Lin to Lam over the years. Lin and Lam correspond to the same Chinese character; Lin is in pinyin, Lam in Cantonese.
Figure 9. Orsay's “Gang of Four” (Jean Charvolin, Georges Durand, Maurice Kléman and Roland Ribotta) with their local hosts at Wuhan Provincial Museum, Wuhan (Sept. 1980).
Figure 10. Maurice Kléman and Lam at Tiananmen Square, Beijing (Sept. 1980).
Figure 11. Three types of liquid crystals: rodics, discotics and bowlics, corresponding to one-, two- and three-dimensional molecules, respectively. Of course a physical LC molecule is three dimensional; the dimensionality here refers to the molecule's dimension used in modeling. Bowlic monomers and polymers were synthesized, and the term bowlic/bowlic liquid crystal is recognized officially by the IUPAC and formally in Handbook of Liquid Crystals. Ferroelectric columnars studied in recent years are bowlic columnars. (For an early review, see Citation[13].)
![Figure 11. Three types of liquid crystals: rodics, discotics and bowlics, corresponding to one-, two- and three-dimensional molecules, respectively. Of course a physical LC molecule is three dimensional; the dimensionality here refers to the molecule's dimension used in modeling. Bowlic monomers and polymers were synthesized, and the term bowlic/bowlic liquid crystal is recognized officially by the IUPAC and formally in Handbook of Liquid Crystals. Ferroelectric columnars studied in recent years are bowlic columnars. (For an early review, see Citation[13].)](/cms/asset/2018f661-6c9f-466c-b27f-8b8de34f4852/gmcl_a_1289627_f0011_oc.gif)
Figure 12. Lam in Kléman's home, Paris (Jan. 1983). Kléman's wife (right) joined the 1980 China tour.
Figure 13. Shunshuke Kobayashi (left) in Lam's home, Los Gatos, California (Feb. 1994).
Figure 14. Some liquid crystalists attending the “3rd Asia Pacific Physics Conference” at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (June, 1988). Lam presented a paper on possible liquid crystalline high Tc superconductors Citation[14], predicted first in Citation[11].
![Figure 14. Some liquid crystalists attending the “3rd Asia Pacific Physics Conference” at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (June, 1988). Lam presented a paper on possible liquid crystalline high Tc superconductors Citation[14], predicted first in Citation[11].](/cms/asset/7fffcafe-a900-47f6-9102-7e6372a2f862/gmcl_a_1289627_f0014_oc.gif)
Figure 15. Lam in Shu-Hsia Chen's lab, Hsinchu, Taiwan (July 1991). Left to right: Yuh-Ren Shen, Wei-Jou Chen, Lam, Ban-Jy Liang, Shu-Hsia Chen, Jong-Guang Wei and Chin-Yih Chen. All five students went on to earn PhDs.
Figure 16. Ru-Pin Pan in Lam's lab, San Jose, California (Feb. 1992).
Figure 17. Some liquid crystalists on their way to Los Alamos for a visit while participating in a workshop in Santa Fe, New Mexico (April 1993). The NATO Advanced Research Workshop “Spatio-temporal Patterns in Nonequilibrium Complex Systems” was organized by Patricia Cladis and Peter Palffy-Muhoray. Mitsugu Matsushita didn't work in LCs but was well known for his first experiments showing the diffusion-limited aggregation pattern and bacteria pattern formation. This conference, not limited to LCs, gathered the world's top players in pattern formation under one roof.
Figure 18. Mirelle Delaye's (probably) last paper, submitted by her collaborator four months after her death.
Figure 19. Treasurer's Report of PSC prepared by Bill Doane, the Treasurer (Aug. 4, 1988).
Figure 20. Places in Europe and North America I visited from July 1987 to Feb. 1988, to make connections and enlist support for an ILCS. 1. Bordeaux (July '87). 2. Kent (Aug. '87). 3. Boulder (Aug. '87). 4. Budapest (Aug. '87). 5. Pardubice (Aug/Sept. '87). 6. Vancouver (Feb. '88).
Figure 21. Lam's memorabilia from Kent (Aug. 1987).
Figure 22. Lam's LC thermographic name card received at the 11th ILCC, Berkeley, June 30-July 4, 1986.
Figure 23. Act I (Mar. 2, 1988), detailing Lam's vision of the ILCS. Among other things, it recommends that the ILCS should publish a magazine (modeled after Physics Today), points out that forming the ILCS from the PSC by expanding it would be most practical (even though, tactically, two other options are also listed), and proposes to form the ILCS at Freiburg in Aug. 1988.
Figure 24. Bill Doane's supporting letter in his capacity as Director of the LCI (Aug. 10, 1987).
Figure 25. Questionnaire filled out by Glenn Brown (Mar. 22, 1988). He couldn't do hand writing himself (due to Parkinson disease) and so he asked someone else do it for him but initiated it himself near his signature on each page.
Figure 26. Questionnaire filled out by Martin Schadt (Mar. 14, 1988).
Figure 27. Questionnaire filled out by Bill Doane (Mar. 8, 1988). This was one of many from Kent collected by Elaine Landry, Assistant to Doane the Director, and sent to me in a package.
Figure 28. Questionnaire filled out by Shunshuke Kobayashi (April 3, 1988).
Figure 29. Questionnaire filled out by Mary Neubert (March 9, 1988).
Figure 30. Letter from Lam to Chandra (May 25, 1988). In the 2nd paragraph, “13th” was a typo, which should be replaced by “12th”.
Figure 31. Letter from Lam to G. Baur (May 25, 1988).
Figure 32. The Petition: Flyer distributed before Aug. 16, 1988, the date of the PSC meeting, at the 12th ILCC, Freiburg Citation[1]. There are 82 signees (1 from UK and 0 from India).
![Figure 32. The Petition: Flyer distributed before Aug. 16, 1988, the date of the PSC meeting, at the 12th ILCC, Freiburg Citation[1]. There are 82 signees (1 from UK and 0 from India).](/cms/asset/03dd77f6-d612-473b-8145-54353338dd18/gmcl_a_1289627_f0032_b.gif)
Figure 33. ILCS' first official document, announcing its own existence and inviting the LC community to join in as members Citation[1]. It was prepared by Lam in San Jose before the 13th ILCC, Vancouver, 1990, and was distributed at the conference. That is why there was no date in this document. Note that two persons from Kent, Brown and Doane, were among the founding board directors.
![Figure 33. ILCS' first official document, announcing its own existence and inviting the LC community to join in as members Citation[1]. It was prepared by Lam in San Jose before the 13th ILCC, Vancouver, 1990, and was distributed at the conference. That is why there was no date in this document. Note that two persons from Kent, Brown and Doane, were among the founding board directors.](/cms/asset/7214106c-2e9f-4458-ba7e-5ac34265b965/gmcl_a_1289627_f0033_oc.gif)