Russian Liquid Crystal Society
COMMONWEALTH
Liquid Crystals Today, V. 8, 1 (1998)
PEOPLE IN THE NEWS
The following is extracted with permission from the principal newspaper of Tiblisi, Georgia, Sakartvelos Respublica , Tuesday 29 July 1997
Professor Guram Chilaya, the founder of Georgian Liquid Crystal School was born sixty years ago into the family of famous Georgian writer Sergi Chilaya. Guram Chilaya graduated from the Tbilisi first school with a gold medal, and graduated in solid-state physics with honors from Physical Faculty of Georgian State University. His postgraduate studies (1960-1963) were carried out at the Moscow Leedey Institute of Physics, and in 1967 he defended the Candidate Degree on the subject of Electroluminiscence of ZnS single crystals. During the years 1968-1971 years Chilaya was working in Moscow Institute of Organic Intermediates and Dyes (NIOPIK) and here he began to study liquid crystals and published his first paper on electrooptics in chiral (cholesteric) liquid crystals. In 1972 Chilaya returned to Tbilisi to the Institute of Cybernetics of Georgian Academy of Science and became a leader of the scientific group, which became the Department of Optically Controlled Anisotropic Systems. He remained Head of this Department for more than 25 years, and during many scientific researches was conducted under his direct guidance. In 1983 Chilaya defended his doctoral degree and in 1984 became a Professor of Solid State Physics. The group of scientists headed by Chilaya was awarded in 1989 the Georgian State Prize in the field of Science and Technology for their investigations on " Induced Chiral Liquid Crystal Structures in Optical Data Processing Systems". Chilaya has published almost 200 papers, 3 monographs and 10 patents, and in 1981 he organized in Tbilisi the IVth International Conference of Socialist Countries on Liquid Crystal, which attracted many well- known liquid crystal scientists from both the West and East. Chilaya and his colleagues now have much collaboration with foreign scientists and participate in joint research with them. The whole Scientific Community congratulates Batono (Mister) Guram Chilaya on his birthday, and, wishes him happiness and health; we hope he will continue to make his important contributions to the development of Science in Georgia.Сайт управляется системой uCoz