Denis Weaire

Denis Lawrence Weaire FRS (born 17 October 1942)^[1] is an Irish physicist and an emeritus professor of Trinity College, Dublin.

Educated at the Belfast Royal Academy and Clare College, Cambridge, he held positions at the universities of California, 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 Trinity College.

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.^[2]

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.

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

Weaire has a strong interest in the history of science and has edited several collections of historical essays on Irish physicists.

Relationship to Ira Einhorn

During the convicted murderer Ira Einhorn's time in Ireland, Weaire was his landlord.^[3] When Weaire found out about the accusations of murder that Einhorn faced in the U.S., he reported him to the FBI and evicted him.^[3] Weaire, and his relationship to Einhorn, was the subject of the 2004 TV show Interpol Investigates (episode entitled Fatal Compulsion). The part of 'Professor Dennis Weaire' was played by actor Robert Randolph Caton. He was previously depicted in the made-for-TV film The Hunt for the Unicorn Killer, which featured Naomi Watts as Holly Maddux, Kevin Anderson as Einhorn, and Ian D. Clark as Weaire.

References

↑ The International Who's Who 2004. Europa Publications. p. 1782.
↑ Fountain, Henry (5 August 2008). "A problem of bubbles frames an Olympic design". New York Times. Retrieved 9 October 2008.
1 2 TIME Archive: The Ira Einhorn Case. 20 July 2001. Retrieved 17 September 2016.

External links

Fellows of the Royal Society elected in 1999

Fellows	Frances Ashcroft Anthony Barrett Rosa Beddington Derek Briggs Simon Campbell Ian Carmichael Lorna Casselton John Brian Clegg David Cockayne David Delpy Derek Denton Raymond Dixon Athene Donald Philip England Douglas Fearon Gary Gibbons Timothy Gowers Ron Grigg Alan Hall Peter L. Knight John Paul Maier Barry Marshall Iain Mattaj Ernest McCulloch John G. McWhirter John Mollon John Ockendon John Pethica Dolph Schluter John G. Shepherd Joseph Silk James Stirling Alfred G. Sykes Janet Thornton John F. Toland Tony Trewavas Alan Walker Graham Barry Warren Denis Weaire Peter M. Williams Robert Williamson Magdi Yacoub

Foreign	Robert Huber Marc Kirschner G. Ledyard Stebbins Gilbert Stork Edward Witten Richard Zare

Authority control	WorldCat Identities VIAF: 39592279 ISNI: 0000 0001 0890 2891 SUDOC: 086120778 BNF: cb14417292b (data)

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