Recollections of Professor George W. Gray

Abstract

This article collects together personal reminisces of George Gray from a number of colleagues, and friends: Lev Blinov, Duncan Bruce, Atsuo Fukuda, Mark Goulding, Ken Harrison, Cyril Hilsum, Alan Leadbetter, Martin Pellatt, and Peter Wells. Read together they paint a picture not only of a remarkable scientist, and brilliant teacher, but also of a modest, warm and generous man.

Keywords:

• liquid crystals
• history
• reminisces

2. Brief meetings with George in the twentieth century Lev M. Blinov (G. W. Gray Medal Winner 2000) Institute of Crystallography of the Russian Academy of Sciences

2.1. Red square

The end of the 1970s was marked by the appearance of solid research in the USSR on liquid crystals. At the Bordeaux Conference (1978), George Gray showed interest in the Moscow chemists’ research on bicyclooctanes and some other new compounds. There he made the acquaintance of a remarkable man and first-rate organiser, Viktor Titov.¹ I also was at that conference, but since I preferred to run around with physicists, I did not notice the Titan of Chemistry. And then, the following year, Viktor entered my laboratory and asked whether I had ever shared a table with the English. I said that I had not, but I had seen some English sailors drinking beer and singing at the Arkhangelsk embankment in 1944, and I liked their military uniform. After that Viktor invited me to his home where I could meet the English, to talk and to celebrate the successes achieved in the field of liquid crystals.

That’s where I met George Gray. He was accompanied by two colleagues whose names I forget. Let’s call them Dan and Robert.² The translator, Dan, was a small man, as merry as a grig (see the man with a glass in his hand in Figure 2.1). The other, Robert, was very laconic, a big man, and he seemed to be quite suitable for the job of a bodyguard. No table can be seen in the photograph, but the faces of the adult participants prove the usefulness of vodka in facilitating discussions. Almost at the end of the meeting, the men turned their attention to a discussion of the temperature dependencies of the cyanobiphenyls. The next challenge was for the English to find their way to the Rossiya Hotel. It was a straightforward route, passing through half of Moscow, including Red Square. Four of us came down to the metro station ‘Rechnoy Vokzal’, I showed the direction of Red Square to the English and, having parted from them warmly, I started my way home along the broken line. And everything seemed to be good, but for …

Figure 2.1. (colour online) In Viktor Titov’s house. Dan and Robert are to the right; Viktor’s wife and Viktor are on the left, and their daughter Alena is hidden by George’s big hand. The other two ladies belong to the Blinov’s family: Nastya is in blue and Galya in orange. © [L. M. Blinov]. Reproduced by permission of L. M. Blinov.

2.2. The hymn

Two years later, I met George in Tbilisi at the 4-th Liquid Crystal Conference of Socialist Countries (1981), and George immediately told me the end of that Moscow meeting. It emerged that Dan had forgotten both the Russian and the English languages. However, George and Robert were going strong, and managed to drag Dan through the whole of the Red Square without noticing it. But a man in plainclothes who called himself a student noticed them and, having caught the word ‘Rossiya’, showed them the way up to the hotel. After hearing this, I complained that I found my own house with great difficulty that night. I added that the Russians were used to drinking much, but without any difficulties, and were supposed to be ahead of the English in that kind of sport. And all the same I did not manage to beat George at it. And then George cleared up the situation, saying ‘Lev, you had made a great mistake, I am a Scotchman’ and broke into laughter.

In 1981 the Afghan war was going full blast, and very few participants from Western Europe visited the 4^th Conference. Anyway, it was very hot in Tbilisi, and only light Georgian wines, cold fruit-punches, and refreshment drinks were served in Guram Chilaya’s house (see Figure 2.2). This can probably explain George’s disinterested face in the photograph. But soon we managed to make him interested, since there had appeared the Dietrich Demus idea of a liquid crystal hymn shortly before that. At that time, A.S. Sonin wrote a book about liquid crystals called Centaurs of Nature. I borrowed the idea of centaurs from him, and together with Ljudmila Karamysheva wrote a liquid crystal hymn in Russian. Etienne Guyon who had arrived in Moscow helped us to select a melody of a famous Italian song known in the USSR under the title ‘Bambino’, though the Italians do not agree with this. After that our French, German, Polish, and Georgian colleagues made free translations of the hymn. For the first time, the hymn was performed to an orchestral accompaniment at the Tbilisi banquet, five times, by large groups of conference participants in all five languages. It was much spoken about even after the banquet.

Figure 2.2. (colour online) In Guram Chilaya’s house. Sitting from left to right include: A. Petrov, B. Soffer’s wife, G. Gray, W. Becker, Z. Elashvili, L. Blinov, B. Soffer, V. Titov. Standing to the left: Dali (Guram’s sister), to the right Stella (Guram’s wife). © [L. M. Blinov]. Reproduced by permission of L. M. Blinov.

There was no English version of the hymn, and George Gray was concerned about this. Indeed, he cheerfully danced to ‘Bambino’ without saying a word, probably thinking about the idea of singing the hymn in the English language later on. In fact, in about a year I got a postcard from George with a short message: ‘Lev, my lyric attempt was a complete washout. I have forgotten the melody of the hymn’. After that we had to sing it for Nadezhda Usoltseva who performed the melody on the piano and notated it at once. These notes were sent to Gray via express mail transfer system (see Figure 2.3), the English version had been already written at that time. V. Titov and other participants of the International Liquid Crystal Conference held in 1984 in York (UK) stated that the same hymn was performed in English during the dances and everybody liked it. The texts of the liquid crystal hymn written in five languages are given in the Appendix to this section.

Figure 2.3. (colour online) The music to the hymn ‘Liquid Crystals’. © [L. M. Blinov]. Reproduced by permission of L. M. Blinov.

Next year, we met at the regular ‘Socialist’ conference held in Halle (1985). Much to my astonishment, George had already got acquainted with my book devoted to the electro-optics of liquid crystals published by John Wiley & Sons in 1983. Several times we discussed certain issues related to the physics of these centaurs. Figure 2.4 with George swinging his pipe is an example of such discussions. That year we sang the hymn again, but not so loudly.

Figure 2.4. Casual discussion of the physics of centaurs involving G. Gray and L. Blinov. © [L. M. Blinov]. Reproduced by permission of L. M. Blinov.

2.3. Capri

My wife and I were very glad to get a luxuriously decorated invitation to the practically uninhabited island of Capri. But Geoffrey Luckhurst (see Figure 2.5) was already at the island, and a small-scale and seemingly quiet conference devoted to the 70^th birthday of George Gray was organised there. All reports were unofficial, very interesting, but short. Upon completion of the cultural programme offered by Sven Lagerwall, the congressmen fell into talk, then got hot, upon which the hymns were performed again. George was in good shape and danced to ‘Bambino’ with all the female participants and with some male participants of the conference in turn.

Figure 2.5. (colour online) The islanders meet the Blinovs. © [L. M. Blinov]. Reproduced by permission of L. M. Blinov.

2.4. Freedericksz medal

In 1996, the Committee of the Liquid Crystal Society of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) decided on Viktor Titov’s initiative to arrange the Freedericksz Medal. It was supposed to award this medal each year to two candidates that had made substantial contributions to the progress of liquid crystal physics and chemistry. In addition, one of winners should be from the CIS countries, and the medals should be given to physicists and chemists in turn from year to year. So the first two medals were awarded in 1997. The medal in chemistry was handed out to George Gray, of course, and the medal in physics was awarded to Prof. V.N. Tsvetkov, the disciple of Freedericksz. Figure 2.6 shows the award of the medal to George Gray in Peterhof Palace (St. Petersburg). This event was welcomed by the CIS scientists at the Russian Liquid Crystal Conference, though the conference was devoted to a bleak event (anniversary of V.V. Titov’s death). For some reasons, I failed to participate in that conference and to meet George. Later on, the life in general and especially life in Russia have changed considerably. Unfortunately, in the twenty-first century, our meetings became very rare.

Figure 2.6. (colour online) Freedericksz Medal award to G.W. Gray in Peterhof Palace (St. Petersburg). From right to left: G. Gray, E. I. Ryumtsev (Director of the Institute of Physics under the Saint-Petersburg State University), S.A. Pikin (Chairman of the Committee of the Russian Liquid Crystal Society), S.I. Torgova (the Secretary of the Committee). © [L. M. Blinov]. Reproduced by permission of L. M. Blinov.

Figure 3.1. (colour online) George Gray and Duncan Bruce. © [University of Exeter and D. W. Bruce]. Reproduced by permission of the University of Exeter and D. W. Bruce.

3. Duncan W. Bruce, University of York

3.1. Preamble

Exeter awarded George an Honorary DSc in 2002 (Figure 3.1), with the ceremony happening soon after the ILCC held in Edinburgh of which George was Chair. The meeting itself had been a great success and George was there with all his family. He then came down to Exeter with Marjorie and gave a wonderful acceptance speech on behalf of himself and all of the day’s graduates. It was a lovely occasion.

3.2. The oration

George William Gray

Chancellor:

This University has honoured many great and distinguished people in its history, but how often can it say that the deeds of one of its honorary graduates have affected the lives of all those who would hear the oration? Today is one such occasion.

In the late nineteenth century, an Austrian botanist named Friederich Reinitzer was working with plant extracts and characterising these materials by their melting point. In 1888, he published observations on one of these which, strangely, had not one but two melting points – what Reinitzer reported was the first recognition of liquid crystal behaviour. So, what are liquid crystals and why are we thinking about them today?

Imagine a cube of ice – perhaps destined to create just the right temperature in a gin and tonic. And then imagine what happens if the ice is left on the table and never makes it into the glass. It melts and changes directly from a solid to a liquid. This is behaviour with which we are familiar, but liquid crystals do it differently. So, instead of melting directly to a liquid, these materials pass through the liquid crystal state first. This liquid crystal state is ordered like a solid and fluid like a liquid – a very ordered liquid – and this means that its properties are rather special. And it is all around us – from the soaps and detergents which keep us and our homes clean to the very cell membranes of our body – the liquid crystal state is ubiquitous and yet recognised in so few places.

George William Gray is a Scot and a chemist, educated in Glasgow and London, who became fascinated with these liquid crystals and started working on them more than 50 years ago. George is a very careful scientist and much of his work was of a type which was then and still is now, somewhat unfashionable, for what he did was solid, systematic work which created a vast amount of knowledge which related the structure of these liquid crystals molecules to their behaviour and properties. No other author in the history of the subject has published on more new liquid crystals than George. Furthermore, the classification of the structures formed by liquid crystals is now well accepted and George was central to this, working with a former Professor of Chemistry here at Exeter, Alan Leadbetter. They were able to show the subtle differences in the ways molecules organise and they created a legacy which forms part of the basic vocabulary of the subject today.

In the early 1970s, George was at Hull University and was working on liquid crystals under a contract provided by the Royal Signals and Radar Research Establishment at Malvern. By this time, it had been shown in Switzerland and the USA that simple displays could be made from liquid crystals, but what the world lacked were materials which would work from the cold of Siberia to the heat of Sudan, and which were stable both to light and to moisture. That is, the market wanted displays that did not need replacing every few weeks! From all the systematic work that George had done, he knew how to build into the molecules the necessary properties and he was rewarded with a now famous series of materials, the so-called cyanobiphenyls, which made the widespread commercialisation of liquid crystal displays a real possibility. Indeed, within a very short space of time, and in collaboration with his sponsors and with the chemical firm British Drug Houses (BDH) in Poole, Gray and the team turned the idea into a commercial reality.

For, Chancellor, today we are honouring someone whom we can truly say has touched the lives of everyone in the developed world and many in the developing world, for this is the man whose work made liquid crystal displays – LCDs – a reality. LCDs, as we all know, are low-cost and lightweight displays which require minimum power to run them and we all own them, be they in the form of watches, calculators, laptop computers, or perhaps in the most up-to-date applications in the viewfinders in camcorders – so-called microdisplays. The current world market in these displays is in well in excess of $10 billion and they now outstrip cathode ray technologies. Of course, the story has its downsides and I’m afraid, George, that without LCDs there would be no Gameboys and millions of parents, this one included, would be grateful for that! However, the discoveries did not stop in the early 1970s and the liquid crystals used in watches, mobile phone displays, and camcorder viewfinders are all different and require different properties. Once more, George was at the centre of things and it was his chemistry and insight which provided the materials and understanding to allow the technological advances to take place. Further, George was central to the development of liquid crystals whose colour appears to change with temperature – thermochromic liquid crystals – which find application in, for example, strip thermometers which can be used in a non-invasive manner.

During his academic career, George published more than 350 papers and patents and his achievements were recognised by election to the Royal Societies of Edinburgh and London and to the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin, by his investiture with the Insignia of Commander of the Order of the British Empire, and by the receipt of several prestigious lectureships and awards, among which was the Kyoto International Gold Medal and Prize in Advanced Technology in 1995 – the Japanese equivalent of the Nobel Prize.

And as he approaches his 76^th birthday, he is still going strong and working as hard as ever. Indeed, he and I have only just returned from the International Liquid Crystal Conference in Edinburgh, held under his chairmanship, and attracting more than 800 delegates from all over the world.

And what of the man? Hard-working and a first-rate scientist – of course. Supportive of younger scientists trying to make their way – every time. Unapproachable because of his achievements – never. Full of fun and energy – that’s George. And once more, as his wife Marjorie, here with us will testify, here is someone who has somewhat redefined the word retirement! It is also very appropriate that George receives his degree at this ceremony, consisting as it does of graduands in chemistry, physics, biology, engineering, and computer science, for liquid crystals impinge on, and is informed by, each of these disciplines and all such scientists and more are to be found at meetings such as the one George has just attended.

Chancellor, in recognition of his fundamental contributions to the science of liquid crystals and his ground-breaking work in the realisation of liquid crystal displays, I now have pleasure in presenting George William Gray for the degree of Doctor of Science, Honoris Causa.

4. Atsuo Fukuda

Chemistry is great. Without liquid crystal samples, I could not do any measurements to clarify their intriguing properties. George was a chemist. I envied and respected him. When I found a position at the Department of Organic and Polymeric Materials, Tokyo Institute of Technology, in 1975, I switched my research field from alkali halides to liquid crystals. The first paper in the field of LCs I wrote after some struggle was on the Cotton–Mouton effect in cyanobiphenyls.[1] In 1977, George had visited Japan and gave an Invited Talk at the 3rd JLCC in Tokyo, which inspired me to write the paper. Thus, I started to study LCs with George, although he did not recognise who I was.

I was so interested in his talk that I wrote a letter asking some questions, but actually I was not successful in obtaining a reply at that time. After 40 years I’m now studying the long-range interlayer interactions by RXRS and PEM using Se-containing compounds synthesised by Kingston Chemicals; I am going to bring my lifework to a conclusion with George, but again I could not let him know what I am doing.

A close acquaintance with George began in the 1980s when I received a letter from him proposing, if I remember correctly, a joint project between Britain and Japan involving the exchange of young LC researchers; I thought I had carefully kept his letter but unfortunately I cannot find it now. Since then, George has kindly helped me in various situations and I learned several valuable things from him. When I submitted feature articles to J. Mater. Chem. in 1994 and 1999, the referees gave me very supportive reports. The characteristic style of writing indicated that there was no doubt the referee was George; of course referees are anonymous and hence I have no evidence, just my imagination. He also gave thoughtful attention to me as Editor of Liquid Crystals, when I retired from the Editorial Board, by continuing to send me free copies of the journal.

We met together at various conferences, meetings, and events. The 12th Annual Conference of the British Liquid Crystal Society was held at Southampton in 1997, at which the George W. Gray Medal was awarded to Frank Leslie. I was also invited to the Conference and gave the Sturgeon Lecture on ‘Thresholdless antiferroelectricity (TLAF), V-shaped switching, and liquid crystal displays (LCDs)’. Figure 4.1 is a photograph at the meeting with George and Frank. In the summer of the same year, George and I were invited as plenary speakers to the dedication of the new Liquid Crystal Institute Building at Kent State University. We deepened our close acquaintance, and at lunch as shown in Figure 4.2, George gave me encouragement by telling me – ‘V means Victory. Good luck for the commercialization of TLAF-LCDs’. Actually TLAF-LCDs were prototyped by Casio and Toshiba, but unfortunately, not commercialised. Scientifically, however, I was able to prove the emergence of TLAF in the bulk as reported at the ILCC 2014 in Dublin.

Figure 4.1. (colour online) Atsuo Fukuda, Frank Lelsie and George Gray (Southampton 1997). © [A. Fukuda]. Reproduced by permission of A. Fukuda.

Figure 4.2. (colour online) The lunch held immediately following the dedication ceremony of the Liquid Crystal Institute Building at Kent State University (1997). Enjoying lunch are (left to right) LCI Director John West, plenary speakers Atsuo Fukuda (Shinshu University) and George Gray (University of Hull) and his wife, Marjorie Gray. © [A. Fukuda]. Reproduced by permission of A. Fukuda.

I wish I had a lively, sociable nature like George. When the 18th ILCC 2000 was held here in Sendai, he took the lead in singing the Liquid Crystal Society Song and enjoyed beating a Japanese drum at the excursion party in the Matsushima Ichinobo Hotel. Two photographs are shown in Figures 4.3 and 4.4.

Figure 4.3. (colour online) George leading the liquid crystals choir in Sendai (2000). © [A. Fukuda]. Reproduced by permission of A. Fukuda.

Figure 4.4. (colour online) George playing the drums at the ILCC 2000 (Sendai). © [A. Fukuda]. Reproduced by permission of A. Fukuda.

5. Mark Goulding, Head of Technology Scouting for Merck

I owe a lot to George for giving me the chance to complete a PhD in nematic LC design at Merck’s West Quay Road, Poole site in the early 1990s. After leaving Hull, co-appointments as Merck’s UK R&D coordinator and a visiting professor role at Southampton’s Liquid Crystal Institute meant enabling me and a few other Merck employees in Dave Coates’ group to combine their ‘day job’ R&D, developing new LCs for Merck, with the necessary study and in-depth basic research required of a PhD thesis. George was not actually my supervisor; that role fell to Geoffrey Luckhurst, to whom I am equally indebted. And it was at my viva, where George was appointed as my external examiner, that my most enduring memory of him and his character is taken.

Having toiled day and night to complete the thesis (giving due care to Geoffrey’s meticulous corrections), the softbound copies were submitted for viva, a warm July morning in 1995. At the appointed time, I entered into Geoffrey’s office to see a table before me; four chairs, George Gray sitting opposite me, Geoffrey to one side and George Attard, the Southampton internal examiner to the other. In front of each of them was a copy of my thesis and my attention was drawn to the one in front of George G. Like the plumage of some exotic bird of paradise, a festoon of tiny post-its protruded from its pages. What was I in for?

‘Sit down Mark, shall we begin? On page 1 of your thesis, you state …’ and so it went, for a good 2½ hours, George leading the questioning, dipping in at many post-its along the way; each time a question designed to test my knowledge to its limits, usually with my answer prompting another question, until George was satisfied or I was at a loss for any deeper explanation. I remember one particular question about Suzuki couplings of bromochlorobenzene and possible side reactions. George persisted with the questions until I really was out of ideas. He made a small note in the margin and we moved on to the next knotty problem.

Happily, I put up a good enough defence on the day to merit the PhD!!

Some time afterwards, at Merck, I asked George about this particular question and why he had been so tenacious. What was the answer, which I had evidently missed? He took a long look at me, smiled and in his rich Scottish accent said ‘I have no idea; we were testing your ability to think for yourself!!!’ This was so typical of George.

To this day, I am also very grateful to George for the recommendation of Edradour, one of Scotland’s very finest single malts from its smallest distillery. I always think of him when I have a nip.

6. Ken Harrison

My comments are brief and do not do justice to the huge debt of gratitude I owe Prof. Gray. During my PhD work, I found him to be very clear in the goals of the work, someone who paid great attention to the detail and to avoiding ‘loose ends’. He was very supportive and available on a daily basis (where possible). The thesis was completed in ‘a reasonable time’ very much due to his support. The ‘post doc’ work, leading to the cyanobiphenyls, was exciting and rewarding. Prof. Gray was never carried away by the results and keen not to be premature in announcing the results to the scientific world. He recognised the importance of patent protection and even devised a code for referring to the individual compounds!

Prof. Gray was very proud of his subject, namely chemistry, and its contribution to LCDs. In the consortium, there were many physicists and he was very clear that they should ‘learn some chemistry’ and not see synthetic chemistry as just ‘pot boiling’! Not sure if he said this to them directly!

In reflecting on the achievement of the work, Prof. Gray summed it up in a most profound and succinct way ‘If it offends, then take it out’. This phrase summarised exactly the key difference between the existing materials for LCDs and the cyanobiphenyls.

Lastly, Prof. Gray was someone who did not ‘hog the limelight’, giving acknowledgement and praise where due. Moreover, he gave me the opportunity and responsibility to give the first talk about the work at an international conference. It was a pleasure and a privilege to be a member of Prof. Gray’s research group.

7. Reflections on the achievements of George Gray Cyril Hilsum

My first meeting with George Gray has been well documented [1] and publicised.[2] It took place in London on 1 October 1968. It was organised by the Ministry of Technology to assess the practical knowledge on liquid crystals then existing in the UK, in order to guide a Working Party on Flat-panel Displays established by the Ministry a year earlier. The audience of about 40, from academia, industry, and Government Establishments, included all who claimed that practical knowledge, but I, the chairman of the Working Party, concluded after the meeting that there was only one person there who could help me. George was a giant amidst dwarfs. In a few words, he could show deep understanding and familiarity, whereas others could only quote texts.

George was then a Reader in Organic Chemistry at the University of Hull, and had established his authority in LCs in 1962 by authorship of ‘Molecular Structure and the Properties of Liquid Crystals’.[3] However, his research was now floundering for lack of outside appreciation and support. The Chemistry Committee of the recently formed Science Research Council had rejected his proposal for development of improved LCs on the grounds it contained insufficient research content! The recent burgeoning of interest in LCs by the US electronics industry had encouraged him, but there seemed no parallel activity in the UK. George felt he would be more valued in the US, and was seriously considering a move. Our intervention was timely. Though our own funding would not appear for some time, we made it clear to him that he would be the first beneficiary of a forthcoming Government Displays programme, and he was patient.

His patience was justified, and, as we know, led eventually to LCs becoming a consumer commodity. George’s achievements have been recognised worldwide, and this issue is a testimony to the high regard in which the LC community holds him. Two questions merit addressing. Would practical LCs have emerged without George’s expertise? And would LC displays have become dominant without cyanobiphenyls?

George entered late in the search for a stable LC suitable for displays. Already candidates had emerged from groups at RCA,[4] Hoechst,[5] Merck,[6] Owens Illinois,[7] Kent State University,[8] Temple University,[9] and the University of Halle,[10] including Schiffs bases, phenyl esters, azoxybenzenes, and tolanes, but all showed serious deficiencies for practical displays. In 1970, when he accepted the contract from us, George was convinced that there remained unforeseen opportunities. After two years of focussed research, his optimism was being tested. He was prepared to admit that he had fully explored those opportunities, and he, with the rest of the world’s organic chemists, was running out of ideas. As we approached the renewal date of his contract, in April 1972, he confessed to me that there might not be a solution, and he needed to think of a different way forward.

The solution was there, but it was masked. All known families failed, but the failures had nothing obvious in common. George’s conclusion from the evidence was an inspired departure from conventional thought, not a programmed progression in checking off alternatives. Nevertheless, he certainly regarded the new concept, the elimination of the central bond, as a last throw. He was denied the possibility of being on the spot when the idea was tested, for in August he had to attend the Liquid Crystal Conference in Ohio. He was on tenterhooks during the return journey, for his colleagues back in Hull had not been in contact, wanting their results to be a surprise. Of course George denied ever having had any doubts, but his relief was apparent in the subsequent meetings, particularly as every test on stability and performance proved better than expectations or even hopes.

The uniqueness and significance of the invention rapidly became obvious to me, for I could see the display world floundering, unsure how to progress. The devices which they were producing in large numbers met no sensible life prediction, and the organic chemists offered no way forward. The publication of the biphenyls in 1973 changed the whole climate for LC devices, and also the approach to new LC families by the chemical companies. The high regard with which George was now viewed worldwide was typified by the approach of Merck, the largest LC supplier. We had chosen BDH, Poole, as the commercial suppliers of biphenyls, and when Merck bought BDH from its owners, Glaxo, in September 1973, they announced they would not move LC production to their facilities in Darmstadt, because they did not want to disturb the productive relationship between Poole and Hull. Moreover, they later accepted that their own invention of phenyl cyclohexanes had its roots in George’s work. We therefore can attest with some confidence that no other group would have invented biphenyls, and no alternatives to biphenyls would have emerged from rival approaches for many years.

Let us now consider what could have happened if George had not experienced his moment of genius. The world was ready for flat panel displays. The standard device for showing the output from electronic systems was the CRT, and this was proving incompatible with low-voltage chips and the general miniaturisation of electronic systems. However, the search for an alternative was proving costly and the great hope, liquid crystals, seemed to be losing impulsion. The uncertainties had already led to the main US industrial participant, RCA, abandoning the field, and the usual source of US industrial research funding, the Department of Defence, was reducing support for flat panel display projects. The DoD scientist now responsible for all electronics projects, George Heilmeier, previously the leader of the RCA LC group, had justified the reduced interest in a keynote speech to the IEEE 1972 Conference on Display Devices, saying ‘But what priority should be given to such a development among all other DoD electron device needs? How many realistic scenarios are there in which we win because we have a flat-panel display in the cockpit while the other guy has a CRT?’[11]

Fortunately our own Ministry, now the Ministry of Defence, did not share these doubts, because we needed flat panels for our miniature radar sets, and we could see many dual uses. We had to move forward, and if LCs proved intractable, we would have to look elsewhere. In fact, our UK programme included two rival techniques, electrophoresis and electrochromics, both admittedly with a lower priority.

The electrophoretic display was invented by Isao Ota, of Matsushita, in 1970.[12] It was developed by Plessey, Caswell, under MoD contract in the early 1970s, and provided a device of startling contrast.[13] The technology faced three problems, particle agglomeration, gravitational settling, and electrode staining, and we could not justify effort to overcome them once a successful LCD was in our hands. Today, of course, we see how those problems were solved 25 years later by particle microencapsulation. This was invented by E-Ink in 1998,[14], and is now used in a variety of tablet readers like Kindle.

There are two forms of electrochromic display: one solid, and one liquid. The solid type was proposed by Satyendra Deb and Robert Shaw of American Cyanamid in 1966, using tungsten oxide.[15] The technology was followed mainly as a filter, for example, on an automobile dimming rear mirror, but Timex became interested for watch displays, and Bell Laboratories published work on experimental devices.[16] A liquid electrochromic display was patented by Philips in 1970, with a system based on ethylviologen dibromide.[17] A larger project was mounted by ICI, based on polymeric dipyridylium.[18] ICI had early plans to make devices in the USA, but later chose not to enter the field because of the progress on LCDs.

It is clear that in the early 1970s there was an urgent requirement for flat-panel displays, and a range of technologies available, all facing development problems which needed industrial and government commitment of funds. The invention of biphenyls made the choice of technologies obvious. However, should George have failed to find a stable LC, there would have been a much higher priority applied to the rival technologies, and liquid crystals could well have then reverted to a technology of only academic interest.

George seemed to the outside world untouched by his success, and he was certainly a modest man. Perhaps, he was a little puzzled as to how his knowledge of organic chemistry could have had so great an effect, and he told me that his whole world had changed in 1970. Fame did not sit easily on his shoulders. At a formal dinner held in his honour, he pointed out to me, seated at his side, that he would have preferred beer to the vintage wine, and was horrified when I asked the waiter for the change. But he did drink the beer!

George’s achievement has been recognised by personal preferment and many awards, culminating in the Kyoto Prize in 1995. There can be few organic chemists whose research can have had such a pronounced effect on our social and professional lives, for flat-panel displays are now ubiquitous. We can then wonder why he was denied the ultimate accolade for all scientists.

8. George Gray – some personal reminiscences Alan Leadbetter

My first meeting with George was in the early 1970s when I became interested in doing research in the field of liquid crystals. At this time, I was in the Chemistry Department at the University of Bristol and was already studying the structure and properties of glasses and molecular crystals using X-ray diffraction and neutron scattering and part of this work (on chalcogenide glasses) was supported by the Royal Signals Research Establishment (RSRE), Malvern. Our main contact at RSRE was John Kirton and through him I learned of their strong interest in liquid crystals and their collaboration with George Gray. He strongly recommended that I contact George for advice and to obtain interesting liquid crystal samples, but he warned me that George did not suffer fools gladly so I should be careful if I wanted his help!

Accordingly I made contact with George and we visited each other’s labs. We immediately hit it off very well and after his visit in Bristol I took him to catch the train back to Hull via a visit to a pub near the station where, over a pint of beer, we drafted our first joint research proposal to the SRC (which was duly awarded). Our collaboration began then and continued actively over the following 15 years. We soon became very good friends and remained so until his death, visiting each other’s homes and my wife and I very much enjoyed the company of George and Marjorie. Figure 8.1 is a photograph of George with Brenda and me at his 80th birthday celebrations.

Figure 8.1. (colour online) Alan and Brenda Leadbetter with George Gray. © [A. Leadbetter]. Reproduced by permission of A. Leadbetter.

It is worth stating that when we first met, George was still a Senior Lecturer at Hull because his true worth was only then becoming properly recognised, not only in the University but also in the wider community of organic chemists. The problem was that the field of liquid crystals had been thought to be a backwater and the synthetic chemistry required to make these mildly interesting materials was not considered to be at the forefront. Indeed, even some years later, when the wonder of the cyanobiphenyls was becoming widely evident, a senior organic chemist in Exeter University, where I then held the Chair of Physical Chemistry, remarked that George’s organic chemistry was pretty mundane! I explained to him that he was totally missing the point, that George was not simply a synthetic chemist but someone with a deep knowledge and understanding of liquid crystals, which are incredible materials (as everyone now appreciates). However, there was much more than this, in that George understood the potential of the materials, could design and produce them, and had the ability and desire to collaborate fruitfully with physicists and engineers, as well as other chemists. George was of course lucky in that he was in the right place at the right time, but the way that he grasped this opportunity was purely a result of his own outstanding qualities and this has been reflected over the years by the honours bestowed upon him.

During the years that followed, George’s group produced samples for us to study with X-rays and neutrons, some of which we decided on jointly, some, like partially deuterated samples, we specifically requested, and some were new materials and phases that they had discovered and sent to us because they appeared to be interesting. The two members of George’s group who worked most directly with us were initially Alan Mosely then John Goodby, with whom we also had excellent relations. Indeed, the open friendliness and warmth of the Hull Liquid Crystal Group were always evident. Samples were sent to us in a variety of ways but the one I remember best was a delivery made by one of George’s daughters who was travelling by train to some destination west of Exeter, so I waited on the station platform and we managed to locate each other through the carriage window and effect a safe transfer of the valuable goods! In much of our work, only a simple acknowledgement of the origin of the materials investigated was appropriate, but often we published the work jointly and the first such paper, with just him and me as authors, appeared in 1977 entitled ‘Liquid crystals – what makes a mesophase’ and was a brief review of what was – and what was not – known about the many different phases. Over the following years, we did a large amount of work to study the structures and properties of many phases: nematic, smectics A and C, and the various other smectics/disordered crystals labelled from B and D through to K. It was an exciting and successful period and the number of unusual structures and properties discovered has continued growing ever since. The last joint paper of our two teams was published in 1990 (only 24 years ago – how time flies!) entitled, appropriately enough: ‘Unusual structures in some alkyl cyano terphenyls’.

Over the years, George and I met on many occasions and I got to know his family. Indeed, he often took members of his family with him to conferences and, if the venue was interesting enough, my wife would accompany me, for example, to the ILCC meetings at York and Budapest, and finally, in 1999 the year of my retirement, to the European Conference on Liquid Crystals in Crete from which I attach a photograph (Figure 8.2) taken by my wife of George and Marjorie with members of their family plus myself and Carl Garland and his wife.

Figure 8.2. (colour online) Alan Leadbetter with the Grays and Garlands at the European Conference on Liquid Crystals held in Crete (1999). © [A. Leadbetter]. Reproduced by permission of A. Leadbetter.

In conclusion, let me just say that my acquaintance with George Gray over a period of more than 40 years leaves nothing but great memories of a warm and stimulating colleague and friend – it was joy to have known him!

9. George Gray – liquid crystal pioneer Martin Pellatt

Many people influence how one’s life develops: parents, partners, children, other relatives, teachers, bosses, colleagues, to name but a few. These influences, together with key decisions and unforeseen parallel events, can affect us more than we could possibly imagine when we take those tentative steps towards building a career. There is so much to learn and experience throughout our lives. We will never know what might have happened if George Gray and his team had not invented the cyanobiphenyl liquid crystals in 1972. What would have been different for me if I had not taken that job at BDH in 1973? I would certainly have never had the chance to have been associated with George throughout my career and afterwards, during so many different phases of my life, extending to more than 40 years. I would definitely not be sitting here in the midst of the beautiful Dorset countryside writing these reminiscences! Without George’s pioneering work on liquid crystals, would I have been able to write this appreciation of his life and work on a sophisticated laptop computer whilst looking at a superb colour flat panel liquid crystal display? It is the same with all the best ideas: an individual has to come up with the idea before a team is created to develop and refine the idea until it can be turned into reality. Those who worked with George owe much of their success to the fact that he was the one who invented the first stable, commercially successful, liquid crystal compounds, the cyanobiphenyls. He deserves the accolade ‘father of liquid crystals’. The story of how this all happened, and how George’s idea was developed in less than four decades into a new consumer products business worth billions, is one of the all-time classics of innovation. Without George Gray’s pioneering research, would it ever have happened? We will never know.

9.1. The 1970s – uncertainty and unforeseen events

When I was approaching the end of my undergraduate years, I did not really know what I wanted to do, and jobs were difficult to come by during the 1960s. Conventional wisdom at the time seemed to indicate that having a PhD might be a passport to a better job, so I stayed on at Exeter to work with Dr Bill Carruthers on synthetic studies on sulphur analogues of annulenes. Bill, a superb synthetic organic chemist, came from Glasgow originally and had a broad Scottish accent, and working with him certainly improved my ability to understand the Scots accent as well as develop my chemical skills, such as they were! At that time, I hadn’t a clue that a MOD contract was being set up to support Dr George Gray and his team at Hull University to develop novel liquid crystals for flat-panel displays.

Nothing much had improved on the job front by 1970 when I finished my PhD, and during a 3-year postdoctoral assistantship at Oxford, where I worked with Prof. Sir Ewart Jones and Dr Viktor Thaller on naturally occurring polyacetylenes in plants, bacteria and fungi, I made an abortive attempt to secure a Humboldt Fellowship in Germany as a possible route to an academic career. Once I had accepted, wisely as it turned out, that an academic career was not for me, I decided to have another go at seeking gainful employment in the chemical industry. Little did I know how my PhD and postdoctoral experience would influence the first weeks of my first and only job as an organic chemist!

I was encouraged when BDH Chemicals Ltd. in Poole offered me an interview, because a succession of dismal interviews with several chemical companies and institutes doing boring routine stuff had offered me no real interesting opportunities. If I recall correctly, BDH was looking for someone with experience in chromatography. At the time, anyone working with chemicals knew, of course, that BDH supplied chemical reagents, and I assumed that they were looking for someone who would have the skills necessary to be able to separate, purify, and analyse novel reagents. As I emerged from the train into Poole’s early Spring sunshine and saw how close BDH’s West Quay Road factory was to the sea, I thought that Poole might well offer me a very attractive place to live and work. Strangely, I had a feeling afterwards that the job I had applied for was not the one for which I was interviewed, because Clinical Development was also looking for chemists. Nevertheless, if I was fortunate enough to be offered any job by BDH I was convinced that I would really enjoy working there in a pleasant location that was so unlike that of any other chemical companies I had visited. BDH even had their own fishing boat, would you believe!

Interviews during the early 1970s were much less formal than they are these days: psychometric tests were almost unheard of, and I had only one very informal interview with the Research Director, Dr Ben Sturgeon. He told me absolutely nothing about what I would be doing if I got the job, except that I would be working on biphenyls. This reinforced my idea that I would be doing research on something to do with polychlorinated biphenyls, a hot topic at the time because of their high stability and potential threat to the environment. I remember that the labs at BDH were pretty basic compared to the excellent facilities in the Dyson Perrins Lab at Oxford – no NMR machine, and not even a Buchi evaporator – but everyone was very friendly, even Ben Sturgeon! I was delighted when BDH offered me the job, and a starting date of 1 May 1973 was agreed. I found somewhere to live in Poole, stuffed my meagre possessions into an old steamer trunk, cadged a lift off a friend in Oxford who had a Morris Minor, and turned up at the lab having braved a picket line, because most of the production and engineering staff were on strike. Well, it was the early 1970s!

That first day proved to be my introduction to those strange chemicals called liquid crystals, to the potential for their use in flat-panel displays, and to George Gray’s cyanobiphenyls, which I discovered were still top secret, having been patented only the year before. I had never heard of liquid crystals, but when seeing a small sample of K15 for the first time I vaguely recalled that I had made a few long, rod-shaped molecules during my PhD when I had been attempting to cyclise and rearrange polyunsaturated thioene-ynes into thioannulenes, and that they had had a similar milky appearance. I could never get these highly unstable molecules to crystallise, and I had assumed that the highly viscous, milky white phases which cleared on warming were simply full of impurities. It was only later that I discovered that the early workers on liquid crystals some hundred years earlier had made exactly the same mistake. I did not know that BDH had been working for many years with Dr Cyril Hilsum at the Royal Radar Establishment, Malvern (RRE), on gallium arsenide, and that when Cyril had offered Ben a contract to work on liquid crystals’ synthesis, scale-up, and commercialisation, he had commented that this was the first time Cyril had ever asked him to do something he knew anything about! I also recall being told later that my first day had happened to coincide with the day on which E Merck, Darmstadt, Germany, had formally taken over BDH Chemicals Ltd. from Glaxo. My ‘Cyril Hilsum moment’, perhaps: Cyril liked to recall that the Japanese had surrendered on the day he joined the Admiralty. I sometimes wonder if Merck would have continued their plan to buy BDH if they had known if I was joining.

I spent the first few weeks at BDH making modest quantities of 4-cyano-4ʹ-pentylbiphenyl, which I was told was called K15 or 5CB, so that George and his colleagues could discuss its structure down the pub without anyone else finding out what was going on. I was fascinated by the appearance of this milky white fluid, and I soon discovered that purifying it by distillation, chromatography, and recrystallisation was a real challenge. I was also told that an important task would be to find a way of making the closely related compound 4-cyano-4ʹ-pentoxybiphenyl for possible use in designing room temperature eutectic liquid crystal mixtures for displays. George and his colleagues had made this compound in very small amounts from suspected carcinogenic intermediates, which use of course would be an absolute no-no in industry. I think Ben Sturgeon was very pleased that I quickly came up with a clean synthetic method using easily prepared, relatively safe intermediates, thanks to my PhD work on sulphur-containing annulene precursors, because we had only been working with George’s group at Hull for a short time and it demonstrated that we industrial chemists could deliver the goods quickly when required. Ben decided that as K stood for Ken Harrison, one of George’s co-inventors, he would name the alkoxy versions the ‘M-series’. Later on, in the same vein, other series of novel liquid crystal compounds were given similar code names, some using the initials of colleagues if an appropriate name existed. All the compounds we made were sent to colleagues at RRE for testing and evaluation for use in small experimental displays.

I first met George and his students and colleagues, the RRE team, and other members of the newly formed Liquid Crystal Consortium, at a meeting at Malvern later that summer. I do not have much recollection of my very first impressions of George because it was so long ago. Nevertheless, I do remember noting that he was excellent company down the pub after Consortium meetings: he smoked a pipe, he enjoyed the occasional cigar I gave him (I smoked a few in those days), and he liked a beer, or two, or three, but I do not recall him drinking any gin and tonics in those days. More of that later! During meetings he always seemed very calm and in full control of the facts and important scientific issues when discussing the diverse range of complex problems that we had to deal with during those hectic early days of the liquid crystal story. He also appeared very shrewd when dealing with the industrial members of the Consortium, who, of course, had widely differing interests and their own plans for exploiting the new cyanobiphenyls. I was impressed that George, an academic, seemed to understand and appreciate the demands of doing synthetic chemistry on an industrial scale, and accepted that we simply could not make large quantities of all of his inventions using the methods he employed in his lab on a small scale, or perform ‘instant scale-ups’ and have multi-kilogram quantities of pure compounds available within weeks. The politics of the collaboration seemed unduly complex, but I was not involved in any of that in those early days. Everything was complicated further when Hoffman la Roche received a licence to manufacture the cyanobiphenyls two years after BDH had started commercialisation, whilst E Merck Darmstadt, BDH’s owners, were developing their own rival range of phenylcyclohexane-based liquid crystals. These were invented by Merck’s Dr Rudi Eidenschinck, one of the most skilful chemists I have ever known, and a very nice person to have as a friend and colleague. It is very sad to recall that Rudi died shortly before George. We even worried about whether our jobs were safe when we heard the news about Roche’s licence, thinking that they would quickly take over what business we had managed to develop.

I think that it is fair to say that we seemed to lurch from one crisis to another during those early days. All this was going on during a decade of industrial strife, and before there was any deep understanding of any of the now familiar theories of how new businesses should ideally be developed. This is perfectly understandable because we were all flying this particular new business by the seat of our pants, so to speak, and we had to cope with a rapid learning curve. With hindsight, we were developing a range of what were essentially the first organic chemicals to be used for their unique physical properties in a commercial electronic device – one could call them electronic pharmaceuticals, perhaps – without having to comply with all the detailed regulatory procedures that govern how the pharmaceutical industry operates. There was never enough time to go through all the exploratory work before offering novel mixtures to display customers, who already had all the pieces of the ‘technological jigsaw puzzle’ that needed to be fitted together in order to be able to assemble the final device, except for one vital piece: a reliable liquid crystal mixture to put into the display. The pressure was therefore really on!

BDH’s job was to scale up George’s liquid crystals, formulate them into mixtures for displays, and ensure they would be sufficiently and consistently pure for them to survive long enough in commercial products such as digital watches. Chemical purity was highly important, but there was a cultural problem: physicists had become used to having access to metals and inorganic compounds of 6  9s purity or better, whilst organic chemists considered themselves lucky if they could purify their compounds to better than 3  9s and, furthermore, analyse them with sufficient accuracy. Some display designers were not really bothered about what liquid crystals happened to be in the mixtures as long as their displays worked consistently and reliably. Some device companies had already started to design their own mixtures and patent their compositions, which certainly hindered our developments until we learned to patent George’s new compounds along with their use in mixtures with different series of compounds. Mixtures also had to be ‘electro-optically pure’, in other words, free of any potentially reactive impurities such as halogenated compounds and amides that would reduce the resistivity and impair the long term viability of the display. It did not really matter if K15, for example, also contained small amounts of homologues as long as the amounts were consistent. RRE were also striving to develop new mixtures that would satisfy the display makers with respect to a wide range of physical, optical, and electro-optic properties such as a wider temperature range, lower viscosity, and threshold voltage, to develop novel display formats, and to find ways of eliminating display problems such as reverse twist and tilt. They therefore needed a steady supply of George’s liquid crystals from BDH in order to maintain their rapidly growing testing programme.

George and his team were under intense pressure to develop more and more new liquid crystals so that RRE could use them to widen the application range of our relatively simple cyanobiphenyl mixtures. In particular, the BDH team desperately needed a viable alternative to 4-cyano-4″-p-terphenyl (T15), a key component of the classic first commercially successful mixture, E7, because we did not know how to make this compound in sufficiently large quantities and purity from p-terphenyl, which was cheap and readily available. George and his group did a fantastic job trying to find alternatives to T15, and they managed to invent all sorts of potential alternatives. The problem was that they would have been very expensive and even more difficult to make in large amounts from starting materials that would have been very costly, even if we had succeeded in finding commercially available, reliable sources. Fortunately, just as other viable options were running out, Ben Sturgeon’s BDH team managed to find a viable way to synthesise and purify T15, opening up the way to making multi-kilogram quantities of consistently excellent E7 at a reasonable cost.

We all had to work very hard during the 1970s when the liquid crystal business was in its infancy, but it was fun to be at the cutting edge of this fascinating, unique new technology despite the pressures. All work and no play makes for a very dull existence, though, and we were also able to find the time to enjoy ourselves as well as working hard when we were away at meetings and conferences. It was always a pleasure to be able to get out of the lab, attend Liquid Crystal Conferences, Consortium meetings, and other external events from time to time, and make contact with liquid crystal experts from all over the world. I recall seeing George in action during the 1970s, most notably at the Bordeaux International Liquid Crystal Conference, when he was made a member of the Most Noble and Most Ancient Order of Sommeliers or some such flowery title, and he had to parade in an exotic brightly coloured cloak (I think it was red) and a funny hat! One of the series of Liquid Crystal Conferences of Socialist Countries was held in Budapest in 1979, and that was my first introduction to how things were done in a Communist country. It turned out to be much better than I had been led to believe, especially the goulash and the local wine! I did not know at the time that other Communist countries were not as ‘westernised’ as Hungary, and visits to these countries during the next few years were not as well provisioned. George’s wife Marjorie also attended many of these conferences both in UK and abroad, and the two of them always provided excellent company, particularly when Consortium meetings were held in Hull. We were all invited to their large house in Cottingham on one occasion. All I can remember is that there was plenty of food and drink as one would expect, a very large garden, and a friendly black Labrador that struck up an instant rapport with Ben Sturgeon.

9.2. The 1980s – business development, consolidation, and complexity

As the business developed during the late 1970s, new problems began to emerge with some displays, such as the strange phenomenon of electrohydrodynamic instability, unanticipated visual problems such as voids, bubbling and ballooning in displays, air bubbles in the liquid crystal mixtures, to name but a few. There was no time for researching the causes of these display problems – customer pressure demanded that we just had to get on and speedily find ways of preventing them. Some customers would blame the BDH mixtures if their displays did not work, despite the fact that millions of displays made by other customers using exactly the same mixtures and similar techniques were working perfectly well. The best devices were made by customers that knew how to tune all the components so that they worked smoothly together. Worse still, in the late 1970s, we found that our early mixtures such as E7, which performed so well in so-called static drive displays on established methods of alignment such as polyimide and evaporated silicon monoxide, had an inappropriate range of electro-optical properties for their successful use in more complex multiplexed displays. It was obvious to us all that a new approach to mixture design would be necessary if we were going to be able to take advantage of the potentially huge new markets for more sophisticated devices such as pocket calculators and industrial displays. All these factors increased the pressure on George’s team to come up with a continuous stream of liquid crystal compounds that would enable the formulation of mixtures with even more complex electro-optical properties and purity requirements that customers would need for manufacturing multiplexable displays. One can well imagine that by the early 1980s, George had a huge number of liquid crystal compounds in his armoury. This leads to another demonstration of how George’s vast experience of structure–property relationships and RRE’s continually improving testing programme proved so valuable. Many of George’s compounds had been shelved shortly after they had been invented because their properties had proved unsuitable on testing, but they were not forgotten, several coming into their own later on because George and the RRE team were confident from their experience that they would exhibit the properties necessary for designing mixtures to meet the needs of more sophisticated devices such as supertwist displays.

My time in R&D was almost over – I carried on until 1980, working on George’s prolific liquid crystal inventions, making special intermediates for his team, studying how various impurities might affect the longer-term stability of the cyanobiphenyls, and developing a new range of anthraquinone-based dichroic dyes so that the display experts could develop displays without polarisers. Ben offered me the chance to take over the commercial side of the business from Dr Rob Wilcox, who had made a sterling and ultimately successful effort as Marketing Manager to develop the mixtures business, particularly in Singapore, Taiwan, and the USA. Rob had decided to move to the States to look after the business there, where it was still expanding rapidly. My comfort zone changed very quickly! Instead of working in the lab I had to learn very quickly how to survive in the alien commercial world, deal with all the increasingly complex politics, develop new markets for our products in countries such as Hong Kong, China, and Korea, and last but not least, get used to a more strategic role in dealing with George, the RRE team, Merck in Darmstadt, and the other Consortium members. I spent 3 months per year travelling around the UK, Europe, and anywhere in which display factories had already been set up or were planned, finding myself jumping on aircraft bound for all sorts of exotic places such as USA, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, the Philippines, Taiwan, Korea, and even China that one could only dream about when working in R&D.

George provided plenty of customer support: there were several occasions during the mid-1980s during which he backed my business development campaign by travelling with me to give lectures on liquid crystals at customer seminars that I had organised, most notably in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, and Singapore. George quickly developed a strong rapport with all the customers, who were obviously impressed that he was willing to support these seminars as well as directing his large research group in Hull. China was rather less sophisticated in those days than it is now: many of the hotels were still rather primitive although accommodation was improving rapidly as they built new hotels. Facilities at the universities and factories we visited were basic. Can you imagine having to find a clean white bed sheet in order to construct a screen for the ancient overhead projector? Nevertheless, during our weekends in China, we all had a great time enjoying the excellent hospitality and visiting some of the sights, including the Forbidden City, the Ming Tombs, and the Great Wall in Beijing. We visited the famous Coffee Bar in the Peace Hotel in Shanghai, where an elderly band were still playing authentic swing music from hand-written scores that they had recovered from their gardens where they had hidden them underground during the Cultural Revolution. They even made a TV programme about this wonderfully authentic band a year or two later. Believe it or not, the Irish coffee in the coffee bar was fantastic, and since Glenlivet was still only £5.00 per bottle in the Shanghai Duty Free, George and the rest of us certainly enjoyed many a wee dram! I recall my first visit to Shanghai by myself in 1981 to support my Reagents colleagues at a Trade Fair and give a lecture on liquid crystals, which lasted 9 hours over 3 days. I actually stayed in the Peace Hotel during that first visit. The local water was unsafe to drink, and one therefore felt obliged to gargle with Glenlivet when cleaning one’s teeth. During the early 1980s, the Peace Hotel was unforgettable for all the wrong reasons: it had not been refurbished since the 1930s when it was called the Cathay Hotel, I think, the bath water came out dark brown, and in some of the rooms rats could be heard walking the tightrope across the central heating pipes in the ceiling. The smell of the ‘night soil’ deposits along the Bund was simply beyond description! Whenever we wandered around town, I was followed by a hundred or more locals who were curious about me and what I was doing there, many wanting to engage me in conversation in halting English and to look through my camera lens across the river. I met an ancient sailor who had served in the British Merchant Navy during World War II, and he wanted to know everything I could tell him about the UK, and especially about modern Liverpool. One never forgets these experiences! Fortunately, things had really improved by the time I visited with George a few years later – we had a great time in China, the hotels were very good and we were looked after very well.

Whilst in Shanghai, George and I were amazed at what was still on offer from the past despite the conditions. I recall that we were invited to one of the former ex-pat social clubs which took us back to what we imagined the 1930s would have been like in Shanghai. We were wined and dined according to the local version of ‘silver service’ whilst a string quartet played chamber music. Table tennis and ten pin bowling were available for our amusement, but instead of mechanical devices for resetting the pins, groups of Chinese were drafted in to reset them. On a visit to Hong Kong for the seminar there, we even resisted the temptation to have a drink in the famous Bottoms Up Bar, going instead to Ned Kelly’s Last Stand traditional jazz club where they served excellent beer and the ultimate comfort food for the Brits after so much strange Chinese food, sausages (Australian but excellent), mash, and onion gravy! When we held a similar seminar in Singapore, we were invited to use the excellent facilities of the British High Commission, and I recall one or two of the customers being concerned that they would have to wear ties, because they did not own any ties! There were too many amusing events during these visits to recall all of them; however, one is certainly worth a mention. During our visit to China, George was convinced that his room in one of the seminar locations was bugged, and that the said electronic device had been hidden in an enormous Chinese vase in the corner of his room. I will leave the reader to imagine how George came up with a novel way of disguising the sounds from his room!

Several of us went to India in December 1981 when the International Liquid Crystal Conference had to be relocated from Poland at short notice, because it was scheduled to be held during the Solidarity Crisis and there was insufficient food and appropriate facilities there for the participants. Prof. Chandrasekhar did a wonderful job organising this meeting in Bangalore at the last minute! I had personal experience of the situation in Poland, as I once spent a week there helping their display engineers to improve their use of our mixtures. Most lunches in the factory consisted of cabbage soup and huge pancakes, but my hosts were wonderfully hospitable during the evenings despite the fact that nothing ever seemed to be available in the shops, ‘officially’, one assumes. I have never eaten cabbage soup since! George showed his unflappable side yet again during the Conference in India when we were having lunch one day in a garden restaurant in Bangalore, sitting under some trees enjoying the warm sunshine and the tasty food. There were several loud squawks from the large black crows high up in the trees, and a black object fell out of the tree straight onto one of our lunch plates. We offered the plate containing the newly arrived rat’s head to a waiter, who, unbelievably, took it away as if this sort of event happened frequently! Perhaps it did.

Many of the liquid crystal scientists also attended the series of Liquid Crystal Conferences of Socialist Countries during the 1980s. I attended meetings in Tbilisi, Georgia, and in Halle, East Germany, in my new Marketing role where George was an honoured guest. Both meetings were very enjoyable although the hotels were very poor. Decent food was scarce in the hotels, particularly during breakfast, where all one would get if late down would be a cup of stewed tea heavily sweetened with sugar, and more often than not, no milk was available. I was surprised because I had assumed that these conferences would be as well organised and provided for as was the Budapest conference, where one could dine superbly in the excellent Hotel Gellert whilst enjoying a typical Hungarian Gypsy orchestra playing beside one’s table! However, despite the disadvantages of the political system, the hospitality of the local liquid crystal teams was just as generous, particularly during the conference in Tbilisi where George and some of the foreign participants were invited to a PhD viva celebration. I think that George was the PhD examiner, which must have been quite an experience for the student! I have rarely seen tables groaning with so much excellent food when we all believed from our experience in our local hotel that holding such a superb ‘do’ would be impossible because no food would be available. We were free to stroll around the city, usually being followed by one of the ‘minders’ who attended the conference. George and the rest of us escaped this surveillance by splitting into two groups, and we gained great amusement watching the minder decide which group he would follow. I recall walking down one particular street and seeing a tethered goat looking askance at a burly fellow sharpening a particularly vicious knife. When we all strolled back that way half an hour later, the goat was no longer there. Perhaps we ended up eating it! Flying back from Tbilisi was also quite an experience – queuing on the apron at the airport for the flight to Moscow whilst admiring the wicker chairs and potted palms, reminiscent of what Heathrow must have been like when it opened in the 1940s! Flying back from Moscow to Heathrow on the Freedom Flight with George was also quite an experience: the weather was very rough with 50 knot winds and severe turbulence on the way into Heathrow, and even some of the cabin crew were sick! We were OK, especially George who had taken advantage of the first gin and tonic he had had for a week or more. Unfortunately, I had to drive home. The elderly British Airways Trident landed safely at the third attempt. In total contrast, the uniformly grey conditions in Halle reminded me of that wonderful film ‘the Man who came in from the Cold’! We all felt rather insecure there because everything that went on was so controlled, but we still managed to have an enjoyable time due mainly to the (unofficial?) hospitality offered to us by the locals, and the excellent homemade brandy offered to us in the University bar. I had never experienced a ride in a Trabant until I got to Halle.

Perhaps the highlight of the early 1980s was visiting Buckingham Palace with George and representatives from RRE to meet the Queen and other members of the Royal Family at a reception for the 1979 Queen’s Award for Technological Achievement winners (Figure 9.1). This Award confirmed that we had succeeded in developing the business into something that had shown consistent growth over several years. The Queen walked around talking to the many guests during the reception once all the introductions had been made, but she did not talk to us and, of course, we were advised that one does not approach her, according to protocol. However, we did spend 15 minutes or so talking to Mrs Thatcher, who had just become our Prime Minister, and George explained to her how her daughter’s LCD watch worked and what was in it. I recall her telling her PPS how much she was enjoying talking chemistry to us when he came over to ask her to move on and talk to some of the other Queen’s Award winners. That was an evening none of us who were privileged to be there will ever forget. Other notable celebrations during the 1980s and in later years to honour George’s awards and achievements included formal dinners hosted by Merck and BDH when George was made a Professor, when he was awarded the prestigious Kyoto Prize by the Japanese (Figure 9.2), and when he was honoured with a well-deserved CBE. George and some of his colleagues from Hull also spent many a day in Darmstadt with the RRE group (by then the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment, RSRE, I believe), and with Merck’s UK and German liquid crystal R&D and business teams during our regular Liquid Crystal R&D meetings, providing plenty of opportunities to socialise with our colleagues from Germany.

Figure 9.1. (colour online) Celebrating the Queen’s Award for Technological Achievement in 1979 to the University of Hull, the RSRE and BDH Ltd. From left to right: John Kirton, Cyril Hilsum, Peter Raynes, George Gray, Ben Sturgeon and Martin Pellatt (taken at the University of Hull, 1980). © [University of Hull]. Reproduced by permission of the University of Hull who supplied the picture to G. W. Gray who supplied it then to M. G. Pellatt.

Figure 9.2. (colour online) Kyoto Prize celebration dinner held in London, hosted by Merck (1995). Left to right: (back row) Rudi Eidenschink; Martin Pellatt, Keith Archer, Peter Raynes, Detlef Pauluth, Cyril Hilsum, Harry Coles, Thomas Schreckenbach, Bob O’Connell, David Durant, Jürgen Gehlhaus, Hans Radunz. Front row: Wolfgang Höhn, George Gray, Michael Römer, Geoffrey Luckhurst, Bill Crossland, Rod Riddle. © [Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany]. Reproduced by permission of Merck who supplied the picture to M. G. Pellatt.

Another change for me came along in 1986, following a major reorganisation of the company’s business. A new Advanced Materials Division (AdMat) was set up, consolidating all the commercial and R&D activities resulting from Poole’s ongoing R&D programmes in liquid crystals, single crystals, epitaxial gallium arsenide and speciality inorganic materials. I became Business Manager, reporting to Ben Sturgeon and responsible for all AdMat’s commercial and R&D activities. We also became more heavily involved in research collaborations with other companies and institutes, funded by the European Commission’s Framework Programme and the UK’s Department of Trade and Industry. I did not see so much of George during these years, other than when we attended the regular series of liaison meetings between the liquid crystal teams in UK and our Merck colleagues in Darmstadt. Ben retired in 1987, but the business continued to prosper despite the lack of his firm hand on the tiller! More changes were to come, however, following a serious fire in one of our warehouses at our West Quay Road factory in 1988. The business did not suffer unduly, fortunately, but changes invariably follow such catastrophic events and after the clean-up there was yet another top management reorganisation.

9.3. The 1990s – rationalisation and new horizons

This decade brought yet more changes in George’s activities. He retired from Hull University in 1992, moved down to a new house in Furzehill in sunny Dorset, just 2 miles from my home, and began a few years of consulting for Merck. We had had yet another major organisational review which resulted in a drastic reduction in employee numbers, many redundancies, and more top management changes. Merck rationalised the liquid crystal business, leaving the UK operation to carry out basic R&D into thermochromic, polymer, and reactive liquid crystals, whilst all the display mixture R&D and production was relocated to Darmstadt. AdMat, still highly profitable, ceased to exist: just one of the many casualties of the operational review. Obviously, morale suffered throughout the company, despite the fact that we had just won a second Queen’s Award for Technological Achievement, this time with RSRE, for the development and marketing of our highly successful E70(A)–E80(A) series of threshold voltage adjustable mixtures for calculator displays. George played an important consultative role for the company during those difficult few years. He advised the new top management on R&D strategy, completely reorganised our Collaborative Awards in Science and Engineering (CASE) programme to focus more sharply on the new R&D programme in Poole, and founded the highly successful series of CASE Conferences which continue to be held annually. Our CASE programme was soon recognised by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council as an excellent model for working in collaboration with academia. George also started the Merck Lectures, an annual event for local schoolchildren timed to coincide with Science Week. George kept me fully involved in all these activities, and his influence certainly played a key part in ensuring that Merck continued to maintain a strong R&D group in Poole during the 1990s.

I was no longer involved in any of the company’s liquid crystal activities after the organisational review, but several non-liquid crystal projects had continued and others had been started during the AdMat days. I was therefore asked to set up a new business development programme looking for novel applications of these activities. We called this operation New Business Ventures (NBV), and we worked very closely with our colleagues in Darmstadt where we could have some of our products scaled up for manufacturing if necessary. NBV also looked after Merck’s Industrial Chemicals Division sales operation in UK, something which I knew absolutely nothing about at the time, although it soon became obvious that there was a strong synergy between, for example, AdMat’s fluoride glasses for fibre optics and coatings, and Merck’s Patinal range of evaporative coatings for optics. We integrated all our own non-liquid crystal R&D and business development activities into NBV, concentrating on developing businesses for novel speciality inorganic materials because of our unique expertise in a range of these areas including fluoride glasses, propellant modifiers, materials for the newly emerging high temperature superconductivity (HTSC) industry, and last but not least, molten salts and ionic liquids. Know-how is vital when making certain ‘effect and functional’ speciality inorganic materials because their physical properties depend on how they are made, and this was particularly important in the case of propellant modifiers and HTSC precursor powders. George was a strong ally in those uncertain years by supporting our activities at the top level, providing valuable advice and backing NBV’s fledgling CASE programme. However, I was surprised one day to be asked if I would look after the entire CASE programme because George wanted to move on. Was he destined to ride off into the sunset for good, at least as far as Merck was concerned? That’s what I thought, but George was not finished with Merck yet: the Eagles’ iconic song ‘Hotel California’ says it all – ‘you can check out when you like, but you can never leave’.

The second half of the 1990s brought yet more change. Merck decided to close the West Quay Road factory, having rebuilt the liquid crystal facility a few years earlier. What would happen to R&D in Poole now? I had already headed a small group tasked to evaluate whether Merck should refurbish the R&D labs at West Quay Road or construct a new facility at Broom Road. Both these options were ultimately rejected when the Board decided to close both the West Quay Road and Broom Road sites, sell them off, and relocate R&D elsewhere. Once again, several options were considered, including refurbishing one of the buildings at the Atomic Energy Authority’s decommissioned nuclear facility at Winfrith, or taking over a vacant office building in Southampton near the docks and building new labs and offices within its shell. Merck rejected both of these in favour of constructing a new facility on a science park at a UK university, asking George to evaluate all the options and then to recommend the most appropriate university for locating this new facility. He soon presented his findings, strongly recommending Southampton University, where we already had close contacts and collaborations in several fields including liquid crystals, optics, and HTSC. It was thought correctly that most of the R&D staff would probably be happy to relocate to or commute daily to Southampton, ensuring that their expertise would be retained. There was sufficient space on the Chilworth Science Park for constructing the new purpose-built facility, and as the University had just opened a new Chemistry Building, the old building could be made available to us for 2 years or so whilst Merck’s new facility at Chilworth was planned and constructed. This was the last formal task that George carried out for Merck during the 1990s, and it was arguably the most important because it secured R&D’s future in the UK for the foreseeable future, confirming Merck’s belief in the importance of their UK-based R&D group. It was wonderful news that Merck would welcome in the new Millennium by opening this brand new purpose-built facility at Chilworth. George, however, did not sever all his links with Merck and take that final ride off into the sunset!

9.4. The 2000s – well-earned retirement

One of the most wonderful aspects of retirement is that one can do exactly what one enjoys doing, subject of course to family commitments, to financial restrictions, and to remaining in reasonable health. George and Marjorie were fortunate enough to have reasonable health most of the time during their first decade in retirement. They enjoyed travelling widely, developing their garden and spending time with their family and friends. George did not abandon liquid crystal activities. I was able to enjoy a large degree of autonomy during my last 6 years with Merck and, as Chief Technology Adviser, I travelled frequently, developing new academic and industrial contacts so that Merck could check out emerging technologies in non-liquid crystal fields and set up appropriate collaborative ventures with US institutes such as MIT and with UK universities and spin-off companies. New effect and functional materials businesses would be needed for securing success in the longer term, since liquid crystals would no doubt be replaced by another technology one of these days. Conventional wisdom states that if a company is not working on possible replacements for its core businesses, such as OLEDs in the case of liquid crystals, someone else will be!

I saw George and Marjorie regularly because they had decided to stay in the Poole area in the same house, and I was still living only 2 miles from them. I visited them regularly and as comes naturally in old age, George and I invariably ended up talking about the old days over a cup of tea, or sometimes over one of George’s hair-raising gin and tonics if I happened to call in on my way home from work. His house was not called Juniper House for nothing, and I had to plead with him to make my gin and tonics a lot weaker than his because I would have to drive home! I invited him to all the annual CASE Conferences as my personal guest, and he enjoyed these occasions immensely, playing a full part in the proceedings by helping to judge the lectures and posters and asking searching questions of the students, who, no doubt, gained much from his experience and wisdom. The students must also have benefitted from being able to connect with the past that George offered them. He missed very few CASE Conferences until he told me that driving over to Southampton and staying overnight was becoming too difficult for him. Attending CASE Conferences helped George to keep in touch with the ongoing programme, to see many of his UK-based former colleagues and friends involved in CASE projects, and to meet new supervisors and Merck staff from both Chilworth and Darmstadt. He also kept in close contact with many of his former liquid crystal collaborators from overseas and retired Merck staff in Darmstadt, continuing active in liquid crystals for as long as possible.

I decided to take early retirement from Merck in 2006, some 5 years earlier than the official retirement age, but I carried on looking after the CASE programme for another year as an independent consultant, organising the 2007 CASE Conference and advising my successor. I still saw George and Marjorie from time to time after I retired, occasionally calling in during my walks in the area. The gin and tonics became a little stronger as I was able to walk home or cadge a lift from my wife Kate on her way back from Wimborne. Meeting George and Marjorie was always a pleasure. He was keen to hear how Kate was getting on in her retirement, and right up to the end of his life he always asked after our daughter Alison, whom he had known since she was born. I do not think that either of us had worked out why Alison had taken up Physics, for both her parents had studied Chemistry. Then tragedy struck entirely unexpectedly when their middle daughter Elizabeth died of a sudden illness, and this was the beginning of the end because neither George nor Marjorie ever fully recovered from the shock. I continued to see George after Marjorie had had to move into a care home. George did likewise a year or so later after suffering a fall and various health problems, from which he never fully recovered. His daughters Veronica and Caroline kept me informed on how he was getting on when I could not go in and see him, for which I am very thankful. He was finding it increasingly difficult to remember things clearly, but he could occasionally remember old friends and colleagues in his more lucid moments.

I saw George for the last time in the care home a few days before he died early in May 2013. He was in a wheelchair by this time, but we were able to sit outside in the garden of his care home in the late Spring sunshine whilst he enjoyed a glass of wine. He seemed at peace with the world, and he was still able to remember a few things from his past, albeit only occasionally. It was a pity that the care home could not find any gin for a gin and tonic, which was what he had asked for!

Old chemists never die – they just fail to react, or so the old saying goes. As for old liquid crystallographers, they just fail to align. George was able to react and align very successfully right up to the last 2 years of his long life. He liked cricket, strangely for a Scotsman, and I’m sure he would agree that he had had a long innings. He smoked a pipe, which I am told is a habit enjoyed by those who can relax, cope with pressure, and avoid too much stress. As it happened, Ben Sturgeon smoked a pipe too. He enjoyed reasonable health throughout most of his life, a distinguished and rewarding career, and all the benefits of a wonderful family. What more could one ask? I was relieved that he passed away before that formidable intellect had completely faded away, and I knew towards the end of his life that he did not want to hang around. It was a pleasure and a privilege to have known George and Marjorie for more than four decades. I was fortunate enough to have been involved with him in the pioneering days of liquid crystals for flat-panel displays, and to have been able to maintain close contact throughout his retirement, continuing after I retired and until just a few days before he died.

George’s passing marks the end of an era for liquid crystal research. His pioneering work on the fundamental science of liquid crystals and their phases, and his deep understanding of the complex relationships between their structure and their physical properties, were so important because they led directly to the invention of the cyanobiphenyls in 1972. What may not be appreciated now that the display business has developed into such a huge market is the fact that George’s pioneering work also contributed massively to the invention of so many novel compounds, many of which came from George’s team, of course, as well as from other chemists. Many of George’s inventions proved useful in the new display formats that were invented during the following three decades. His many friends and colleagues will never forget the excitement of those early pioneering years. Without his contribution, many lives would surely have been totally different. It’s an old cliché, I know, but we’ll not see his like again.

On a final note, George’s house was sold to new owners during the Autumn of 2013, but to this day I still look at the drive whenever I go past, expecting to see his Jaguar K15GWG sitting there in front of the garage door. I sometimes wonder if the new owners of Juniper House also like a good gin and tonic!

10. George W Gray: some reminiscences Peter B. Wells, Emeritus Professor, University of Hull

George Gray spent his entire academic life in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Hull. It so happened that I arrived at Hull as an undergraduate fairly soon after George was appointed, and I, too, spent my career there. So I was able to observe the development of the great liquid crystal enterprise over several decades.

The story of how George came to study liquid crystals, at the suggestion of Professor (later Sir) Brynmor Jones is well known, and will have been mentioned by others in these tributes. What was so special, was that George had the insight to realise the potential significance of a system that did not conform to the usual gas/liquid/solid division of the states of matter as presented in the textbooks of the time. As an aspiring physical chemist, I attended George Gray’s third-year option lecture course in liquid crystals, and was impressed by the phase diagrams on which he had been working to such great effect. It was physical chemistry of a high order! Looking back, it is remarkable that George developed the concept of self-assembly in molecular systems, decades before this became a named and popular topic.

In 1962, his book entitled Molecular Structure and the Properties of Liquid Crystals was published by Academic Press. In the same year, Geoffrey Bond’s Catalysis by Metals appeared from the same publisher. Both books served their fields as important research monographs for many years. They were especially significant for the reputation of Hull Chemistry because they provided important national visibility at a time when the fledgling university was establishing itself as a research institution (Hull obtained its charter in 1954. Brynmor Jones used to say that, when he was appointed to the University College, he was shown one cupboard which contained Chemistry’s research equipment).

George was a good lecturer. He had the art of being able to transmit complex ideas effectively into the minds of his students or other audiences. He was clear and careful in his presentation, and (in the days of board and chalk) his handwriting was a joy to behold, being as precise and careful as his words. Only recently, I threw away a vacation essay he had marked and, as I did so, I noted once again the degree of care that he had taken in commenting on its short-comings. He was also a good communicator with lay audiences, as evidenced by his Inaugural Lecture on being appointed to a chair in 1978.

In the late 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s, it became evident to many that university research frequently required teams of senior people to provide the necessary framework for substantial progress. Thus it was that several staff members with interests in organic chemistry joined the group, and former research student John Goodby returned from the United States. This hugely expanded the competence of the group so that it achieved international renown and, at the same time, relieved George of some of the administration. In later years, when ferro-electric liquid crystals made their appearance, he drew staff from the Physics Department into the orbit of the group. This ability to follow the science, wherever it led, was a hallmark of George’s genius.

Politicians sometimes complain that British universities are good at fundamental research but poor at exploitation. What I have referred to above as ‘the great liquid crystal enterprise’ is the best example with which to counter these (false) assertions. The concept of the liquid crystal display, and hence the television image, brought the science into the work place and home of everyone in the country. This required the electronic competence of the RSRE at Malvern, and the industrial production capabilities of BDH at Poole. The Queen’s Award for Technological Achievement was presented jointly to Hull University, RSRE, and BDH in 1980 (Figure 10.1). If I remember correctly, this was the first occasion on which the Queen’s Award had been granted to a Chemistry Department, and the award emblem itself occupied a place of honour in an illuminated cabinet in the Departmental foyer for many years. All members of staff were happy to bask in reflected glory when the Queen’s Award logo appeared on our Departmental notepaper!

Figure 10.1. Professors Norman Chapman and George Gray display the Queen’s Award citation and emblem in the University’s Middleton Hall after the presentation in 1980. © [G. W. Gray]. Reproduced by permission of J. Goodby and P. B. Wells from a picture given by G. W. Gray.

George was always thinking ahead and revelling in the academic satisfaction that comes from extending the boundaries of fundamental knowledge. It was, therefore, his moment of greatest delight and satisfaction when he was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society. I was Head of Department at the time, and it fell to me to summon the staff instantly to a meeting to announce the news. George was as irrepressible as his dour Scottish temperament permitted, and the announcement was received with great acclamation by the whole Department, and later more widely in the University and in the scientific community beyond our doors.

In 1990, George moved from Hull to become Research Coordinator of Merck Ltd., Poole, leaving the Hull group in the competent hands of Professor John Goodby. Looking back, one may be tempted to think that success was inevitable – but nothing was further from the case. After publication of the book, there was a fallow period when interest in the subject failed to attract research support. Later, despite the Department’s best efforts, there were the usual frustrations common in all vibrant Departments – a shortfall in laboratory accommodation, equipment funding, and technical support. Nevertheless, the outcome is now evident for all to see. It is a great story from all points of view – the science, the technology, the creativity of thought and experiment, and the application of imagination and perseverance. For my part, I shall always regard it as a privilege that I worked in the same environment as George, albeit in another field. Over that period, all the research groups in Chemistry at Hull were uplifted in their aspirations (and hopefully, in their achievements) as a result of living alongside ‘the great liquid crystal enterprise’.

Notes

1. Doctor of Chemistry Viktor Vasilievich Titov (1935–1996) was responsible for liquid crystal research in the Scientific Research Institute for Organic Intermediaries and Dyes and held the position of Chairman of the CIS Liquid Crystal Society. After that he headed the Polygraphic Institute. He was killed by a hired killer. He protected the interests of his institute and remained loyal to his beliefs till his dying day.[1]

2. Note added in proof. Martin Pellatt identified Dan and Robert as Dan Rootham and Dr Rob Wilcox, respectively. Dan was responsible for BDH’s exports to the Soviet Union and he spoke fluent Russian. Rob was the Marketing Manager responsible for liquid crystals, amongst other things.