Denis Weaire

Denis Lawrence Weaire FRS (born 17 October 1942 in Dalhousie, Simla, India) is an Irish physicist and an emeritus professor of Trinity College Dublin (TCD).

Educated at the Belfast Royal Academy and Clare College, Cambridge (BA 1964, PhD 1968) he held positions at University of California, University of Chicago, Harvard and Yale, ultimately holding professorships at Heriot-Watt, and University College Dublin before becoming, in 1984, Erasmus Smith's Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy at TCD.

Together with his graduate student Robert Phelan, Weaire came up with a counter-example to Lord Kelvin's conjecture on which surface was the most economical way to divide space into cells of equal size with the least surface area. This counter-example is now referred to as the Weaire–Phelan structure. This structure was an integral part of the design of the aquatic centre used in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

In 1971, together with Michael Thorpe, he introduced the Weaire–Thorpe model for electronic structure calculations. This has found application in the theory of amorphous insulators.

Weaire is currently carrying out research in the field of foam physics. He has co-authored ''The Physics of Foams'', Oxford University Press (2000) with Stefan Hutzler, and ''The Pursuit of Perfect Packing'', IoP Press (2000) with Tomaso Aste. In this context he published several scientific articles on cylinder sphere packings.

In 2005, he was awarded the premier award of the Royal Irish Academy, the Cunningham Medal. Previous winners include William Rowan Hamilton.

In 2008, he won the Fernand Holweck Medal and Prize.

Weaire has a strong interest in the history of science and is a board member of the History of Physics group of the European Physical Society. He has edited several collections of historical essays, including a 2012 book on Edward Hutchinson Synge with Petros Florides and John F. Donegan. Provided by Wikipedia