Speaker
Description
In this talk I will present my memories of a four-decade long connection, both professional and personal with Professor Lech Longa. I will focus on the primary ways this connection developed and grew: visits I made to the Jagiellonian University, visits he made to Kent State University (including a year-long Fulbright Fellowship), and two sets of biennial conferences we both attended, namely the Liquid Crystal Gordon Conference, and the International Liquid Crystal Conference. Our scientific interests intersected in many ways, but I will simplify by briefly discussing just two areas of research we contributed to: biaxiality and the search for a biaxial nematic phase, and a theoretical understanding of the now experimentally well-established twist-bend nematic phase.
