Cyril Hilsum

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Cyril Hilsum (born May 17, 1925 ) is a British applied physicist and electronics engineer.

Life

Hilsum studied at University College London with a bachelor's degree and then did research from 1945 for the Royal Navy, from 1947 at the Admiralty Research Laboratory, from 1950 at the SERL (Services Electronics Research Laboratory) and from 1964 at the Royal Radar Establishment. Most recently, he was Chief Scientific Officer at the Department of Defense before becoming Research Director at the GEC's Hirst Research Center in 1983 .

From 1988 to 1990 he was President of the Institute of Physics . He is on the Defense Scientific Advisory Council in the UK. He was a consultant to various companies such as Cambridge Display Technology, GEC and Unilever and the European Commission and Chairman of the Scientific Board at Peratech. He was visiting professor at Imperial College.

With Brian Kidd Ridley and Tom Watkins he developed the Ridley-Watkins-Hilsum theory of the Gunn diode . He made important contributions to liquid crystal display (LCD) technology, where he led the UK's national LCD development program, worked on gallium arsenide semiconductor applications, infrared optics and built the UK's first solid state laser.

The patents for LCD materials promoted in the program for which he was responsible brought the British government license fees of over 100 million pounds.

Honors and memberships

The British Liquid Crystal Society awards a prize named after him.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society (1979) and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering . He is an honorary member of the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Physics (2001). He is an honorary doctor from the University of Sheffield and Nottingham Trent University . He is also an Honorary Fellow of University College London, University College of North Wales (UCNW) and the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST).

In 1990 he became a CBE .

Private

His daughter Lindsay Hilsum (* 1958) is a newspaper and television journalist for Channel 4. In memory of his late daughter Karen, an engineer, he donated a prize for women engineers (Karen Burt Memorial Award).

Fonts

  • Semiconducting III-V Compounds , Elsevier 1961
  • Liquid Crystals , Cambridge University Press 1985
  • Editor with T. Moss Device Physics , Handbook on Semiconductors, Volume 4, JAI Press 1993
  • Editor with DEN Davies, AW Rudge Communications After AD 2000 , Chapman and Hall 1993

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Cyril Hilsum awarded the Royal Society Medal for Applied Science. UCL, June 28, 2007; accessed February 5, 2018 .
  2. ^ Fellows Directory: Cyril Hilsum. Royal Society, June 28, 2007, accessed February 5, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Hilsum, Cyril
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British applied physicist and electronics technician
DATE OF BIRTH May 17, 1925