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Professor Denis Weaire

Fellow Emeritus (Physics)
CRANN Board Member (CRANN)
      
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Professor Denis Weaire

Fellow Emeritus (Physics)

 Denis.Weaire@tcd.ie

 

CRANN Board Member (CRANN)


Denis Lawrence WEAIRE recently retired as Erasmus Smith Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy in the School of Physics of Trinity College Dublin. He is a an honorary Doctor of the Technical University of Lisbon, Member (and former VP) of the Royal Irish Academy, Member (and current VP) of the Academia Europaea, and a Fellow of the Royal Society. He served on the interim Board of Science Foundation Ireland and as a member of the Scientific Council of the (EC)JRC, Editor-in-Chief of J Phys (Condensed Matter), a founder member and first Secretary/Treasurer of the European Association of Deans of Science, Chairman of the EU TMR Physics Networks Panel, and President of the European Physical Society. In TCD he has served as Dean of Science, and he has conducted numerous evaluations and reviews for the EU and governmental agencies. In 2002 he was awarded the Cecil Powell Memorial Medal of the EPS. His work has also been recognized by prizes from Shell Amsterdam, the Japanese Society for Science on Form, and special public lectures. In February 2005 he is to be conferred with the Cunningham Medal, the most distinguished award of the Royal Irish Academy. In 2008 he received the Hollingweck Medal and prize, jointly awarded by the Intitute of Physics and the French Physical Society. He was a director and co-founder of a successful spin-off technology company (Magnetic Solutions Ltd) engaged since 1994 in the manufacture and design of magnetic instrumentation and of magnetic annealing systems for the semiconductor industry. He has acted as an advisor on science policy and evaluation to science agencies in France, Portugal, Brazil and Australia and is currently reviewing plans for major research centres in Australia. Research interests have included computational physics, electronic structure, amorphous materials, magnetic devices, soft condensed matter (particularly foams), microfluidics, and the history of science. He has delivered many keynote and plenary lectures on these topics to leading international conferences in a variety of disciplines. In addition he has strong interests in history of science (and has been chairman of the relevant boards of EPS and IOP) and arts-science interactions. He has assisted in the design of the Science Centre at Birr, organised the Quatercentenary Science Exhibition of TCD and other lesser exhibitions, and produced the play "Calculus". He is Chairman of the Library Committee of the Royal Society. He is the author over three hundred and fifty publications and several books, most notably Physics of Foams (OUPP) and Pursuit of Perfect Packing (Taylor anf Francis,Second Edition 2008). His most notable research achievement was the 1994 paper, which overthrew a century-old conjecture of Lord Kelvin, regarding the structure of foam. The "Weaire-Phelan" structure, announced at that time, is to be the basis for the construction of one of the main buildings of the Beijing Olympics- the "Water Cube". He has an extensive record of research grants in the USA, UK, the EU and Ireland.
Details Date
Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter 1994-1997
Vice-President, European Physical Society 1999-2000
Vice-President of the Academia Europaea 2003-Present
Birr Scientific and Heritage Trust(Charitable Foundation) 1992-1998
Magnetic Solutions Ltd (Manufacturing Company) 1994-Present
Details Date From Date To
Elected Member of the Academia Europaea 1998
President, European Physical Society 1997 1999
Member of the Royal Irish Academy 1987
Belfast Royal Academy 1954 1961
Chan HK, Hutzler S, Mughal A, O'Hern CS, Wang, Y and Weaire D (editors), Packing Problems in Soft Matter Physics: Fundamentals and Applications, Royal Society of Chemistry, 2025, 1 - 578pp, Book, PUBLISHED  DOI  URL
A Brief Overview of Packing Problems in, editor(s)HK Chan, S Hutzler, A Mughal, CS O'Hern, Y Wang and D Weaire , Packing Problems in Soft Matter Physics: Fundamentals and Applications, Royal Society of Chemistry, 2025, pp1 - 12, [D Weaire, A Mughal and S Hutzler], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED  DOI
Ryan-Purcell, A Irannezhad, M Whelan, D Weaire, A Mughal and S Hutzler, Compression of a line of hard spheres or bubbles in a transverse confining potential, Philosophical Magazine, 105, 2025, p684 - 697, Journal Article, PUBLISHED  TARA - Full Text  URL
Mughal A, Hutzler S and Weaire D, Coulomb Calligraphy, Forma, 38, 2023, p1 - 5, Journal Article, PUBLISHED  DOI  URL
A. Mughal, J. Winkelmann, D. Weaire and S. Hutzler, Stability maps for columnar structures, Philosophical Magazine, 103, (14), 2023, p1328 - 1344, Journal Article, PUBLISHED  DOI  URL
S. Hutzler, J. Ryan-Purcell, A. Mughal and D. Weaire, A continuum description of the buckling of a line of spheres in a transverse harmonic confining potential, Royal Society Open Science, 10, (7), 2023, p230293-, Journal Article, PUBLISHED  TARA - Full Text  DOI  URL
Irannezhad A, Baragry A, Weaire D, Mughal A and Hutzler S, Packing soft spheres: experimental demonstrations with hydrogels, European Journal of Physics, 44, 2023, p065501-, Journal Article, PUBLISHED  TARA - Full Text  DOI
Weaire, Denis, From bombs to bubbles: the extraordinary career of Cyril Stanley Smith, Institute of Physics History of Physics Group, 2023, p33 - 35, Journal Article, PUBLISHED  TARA - Full Text
Physics in a small bedroom in, editor(s)M.Emmer, M. Abate , Imagine Math 8, Springer, 2022, [D Weaire, S Hutzler, A Irannezhad and K Cox], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED  DOI
D. Weaire, A. Mughal, J. Ryan-Purcell and S. Hutzler, Description of the buckling of a chain of hard spheres in terms of Jacobi functions, Physica D, 433, 2022, p133177-, Journal Article, PUBLISHED  TARA - Full Text  DOI  URL
  

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Packing Problems in Foams in, editor(s)HK Chan, S Hutzler, A Mughal, CS O'Hern, Y Wang and D Weaire , Packing Problems in Soft Matter Physics: Fundamentals and Applications, Royal Society of Chemistry, 2025, pp241 - 264, [S Hutzler and D Weaire], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED
Bergin SD, Weaire D and Hutzler S, The Drop heard round the World, Physics World, May 2014, 2014, p26 - 29, Journal Article, PUBLISHED
The farmers and the cowboys should be friends in, editor(s)L. Wedlin, K. Sahlin and M. Grafstroem , Exploring the Worlds of Mercury and Minerva - Essays for Lars Engwall- Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis - Studia Oeconomiae Negotiorum 51, Uppsala, Uppsala University, 2009, pp113 - 122, [D. Weaire and P. Richmond], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED
Mughal A and Weaire D, Curvature in conformal mappings of 2D lattices and foam structures, Proceedings of the Royal Society A, 465, (2101), 2009, pp219 - 238, Conference Paper, PUBLISHED
L Engwall and D Weaire (editors), Wenner-Gren International Series, volume 84: The University in the Market, Portland Press, 2008, 1 - 153pp, Book, PUBLISHED
Weaire D, Hutzler S and Langlois VJ, Foam rheology in two dimensions, The XVth International Congress on Rheology, Monterrey, USA, American Institute of Physics, 2008, pp833 - 835, Conference Paper, PUBLISHED
Vignes-Adler M and Weaire D, New foams: Fresh challenges and opportunities, Current Opinion in Colloid & Interface Science, 13, (3), 2008, pp141 - 149, Conference Paper, PUBLISHED
Vignes-Adler M and Weaire D, New foams: Fresh challenges and opportunities, Current Opinion in Colloid & Interface Science, 13, (3), 2008, pp141 - 149, Conference Paper, PUBLISHED
Banhart J, Garcia-Moreno F, Hutzler S, Langevin D, Liggieri L, Miller R, Saint-Jalmes A and Weaire D, Foams and emulsions in space, Europhysics News, 39, 2008, p26 - 28, Journal Article, PUBLISHED
Saadatfar M, Hutzler S and Weaire D, Foams, Trinity College Dublin: interconnect, Scientific Computing and Visualisation Newsletter, (2), 2008, p8 - 9, Journal Article, PUBLISHED

  


Page 1 of 14
Award Date
Cunningham Medal of the Royal Irish Academy 2005
Elected Fellow of the Royal Society 1998
Fellow of Trinity College Dublin 1987
Research Fellow, Harvard University 1969 - 1970
Fellow of Clare College 1967 - 1969
Harkness Fellowship (Commonwealth Fund, New York) 1964 - 1966
Major Open Scholarship, Clare College, Cambridge 1961
Cecil Powell Memorial Medal and Lecture, European Physical Society.
Larmor Lecture, Queens University Belfast.
Award for Outstanding Paper, Japanese Society for Science on Form.
My research has ranged over a number of areas in solid state physics, materials science and computational physics. Early work in Cambridge was in pseudopotential theory applied to metals: it resulted in an influential review article, but preceded the major expansion of that subject, in terms of local density approximations. At Harvard I was attracted to two themes in disordered materials: amorphous metals and amorphous silicon. The latter was to absorb my interest for many years, in the proof of theorems and computations that had to do with electronic and vibrational properties. The foremost of these rigorously established the existence of a band gap for an idealised ("Weaire-Thorpe") Hamiltonian, regardless of disorder, which was an important step in understanding a-Si. I also became interested in the process of building random network models for this material. Much later, I was to develop with others the WWW model, based on an algorithm of my own conception. This has been greatly used and highly cited ever since. Quite early in my career I recognised that foam structures, particularly in two dimensions, presented an opportunity for this kind of research, in tune with the growing interest in complex, disordered materials. This grew into a research programme that has by now excluded all else, and is partly encapsulated in the book Physics of Foams, now a standard reference. In 1984 we organised in Ireland the first of a series of conferences on the physics of foams, of which the latest was held in France this year, Attracting 200 participants. Starting at Yale, then at UCD and TCD, this research has produced many key results such as: the Aboav-Weaire Law for statistical correlations in cellular structures the first realistic computer simulation of a dry 2d foam the first realistic simulation for a wet foam the first account of the variation of elastic properties of a 2d foam with liquid fraction, based on simulation the discovery of many ordered cylindrical foam structures the discovery and theoretical analysis of a solitary wave in foam drainage the discovery of convective instability in foam drainage recently, the discovery of a remarkable new form of meandering rivulet instability However the most prominent outcome of our work at TCD was the Weaire-Phelan structure, the minimum energy structure (as far as we know) of a foam of equal-sized bubbles in three dimensions. This overthrew a century-old conjecture of Lord Kelvin (as recounted in The Kelvin Problem), and it attracted worldwide recognition. One of the main buildings for the Beijing Olympics is being constructed in the form of a framework explicitly based on this structure - the Water Cube. The mathematical questions surrounding foam structures are intriguing. I was invited to be the primary coordinator of a summer programme at the Isaac Newton Institute in Cambridge in 2002, to which leading mathematicians came to discuss these topics intensively for one month. However this is not really characteristic of our general style of research, which combines theory, computation and simple experiments in the pursuit of many different physical properties and even their applications. Today most of these topics belong in some sense to fluid dynamics. This research line is continuing unabated into retirement, with some addition of themes from the history of science, which build upon longstanding interests.