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Jerry Ericksen: Liquid Crystal Pioneer

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Abstract

In the 1960s Jerry Ericksen made major contributions to the construction of the continuum theory of nematic liquid crystals. This paper gives a brief summary of his work and the consequent giant impact on the field.

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Notes

  1. The notation here corresponds to that of Selinger [77], rather than that of Frank [36].

  2. We have substituted the modern notation \(N\) for Ericksen’s contemporary \(\hat{n}\).

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Mrs Ellen Leslie for providing the photograph Fig. 1, and to the editors of the issue for the invitation to contribute an article. TJS is grateful to the late Frank Leslie for relating some personal recollections of his time at Johns Hopkins. MCC acknowledges many conversations with the late Jerry Ericksen which provided some of the deeper human and intellectual background to this article.

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  1. School of Mathematical Sciences, University of Southampton, University Road, Highfield, Southampton, SO17 1SY, UK

    Timothy J. Sluckin

  2. School of Mathematics, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, MN, 55455, USA

    M. Carme Calderer

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TJS prepared the first draft of the manuscript. MCC added extra material. Both authors reviewed the final manuscript.

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Pioneering ideas, formulations, and techniques in modern continuum mechanics – in memory of Jerald Laverne Ericksen

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Sluckin, T.J., Carme Calderer, M. Jerry Ericksen: Liquid Crystal Pioneer. J Elast (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10659-022-09955-8

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