Mark Warner

Prof. Mark Warner (1952-2021), a key researcher within the STORM-BOTS network and a pre-eminent theorist in the global liquid crystal elastomer (LCE) community, sadly passed away in December 2021. The STORM-BOTS Consortium will honour his memory by training a new generation of European LCE scientists. His legacy will be our inspiration.

Mark Warner was a theoretical physicist at Cambridge University. Mark was a pioneer in the theory of liquid crystal elastomers. He established much of our current understanding of their constitutive laws and unusual thermo/opto-mechanical behaviour, and co-authored a book, “Liquid crystal elastomers” summarizing the current theory. Mark received a number of awards, including the Alexander von Humboldt Research Prize in 2000, the Europhysics Prize of the European Physical Society in 2003, and the G. W. Gray Medal of the British Liquid Crystal Society in 2014. Mark was elected as an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 2002, and as a fellow of the Royal Society of London  in 2012. Mark also led a large online physics teaching website, https://isaacphysics.org, which is used by hundreds of thousands of physics pupils all over the world. In recognition of this work, he was also awarded the 2019 Lawrence Bragg medal for impact on physics education.