Professor George Gray

Professor George William Gray, who has died aged 86, was arguably one of the architects of the modern world, without whose work our daily lives would be very different. The Glasgow University graduate was the leader of a team of chemists at the University of Hull that, in 1973, developed the first stable liquid crystal materials on which our modern flat-screen televisions, mobile phones and MP3 players all depend.

Prof Gray didn't discover or even first describe the properties of liquid crystals, a class of substance capable of flowing like liquids while maintaining the crystalline structure of solids, and of being "flipped" from opaque to translucent by the application of a small electric current which re-orientates the crystals. His work, however, did turn what had been little more than a scientific curiosity – the only known examples at the time being unstable at room temperature and easily destroyed by moisture, air or light – into the basis of a multi-billion, international industry.

He was born in Denny, near Falkirk, the son of pharmacist John Gray and his wife Jessie. After graduating with a degree in chemistry from the University of Glasgow in 1946, he moved to University College Hull—now the University of Hull but then an outpost of the University of London. There, he worked as an assistant lecturer while undertaking a PhD on the subject of liquid crystals, under the guidance of the sympathetic Head of the Department of Chemistry (and later Vice-Chancellor) Sir Brynmor Jones.

He became a senior lecturer in chemistry in 1960, and continued his research, publishing (in 1962) the first English text on the subject of liquid crystals. However, by the mid-1960s, funding difficulties forced him to shift his focus onto the related study of the chemistry of cell membranes.

In the late 1960s, Prof Gray attended a meeting sponsored by the Ministry of Defence, which had been charged with finding an alternative colour display mechanism to existing cathode ray tubes which were both expensive and dangerously fragile. The senior scientist at the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment at Malvern, Cyril Hilsum, already believed in the potential of liquid crystal displays if only suitable and stable materials could be developed. It wasn't long before he and the University of Hull were awarded a research contract by the MoD to investigate substances exhibiting liquid-crystalline states at room temperatures.

By 1973 Prof Gray and his two researchers, Ken Harrison and John Nash, had designed and synthesised a new class of liquid crystals, called cyanobiphenyls, which were stable and "flippable" at room temperature. Commercialised by BDH Chemicals (now E Merck), in collaboration with the MoD, the first liquid crystal displays in commercial devices appeared the following year. During the 1980s, again in collaboration with Merck, Gray and his team developed a new class of liquid crystals, difluoro-terphenyls, which are used today in flat screen televisions.

Prof Gray spent most of his science career at Hull which, on the basis of his research, was the first university to receive a Queen's Award for Technological Achievement in 1979. He was awarded numerous honorary doctorates and research medals, not least the Kyoto prize (Japan's equivalent of the Nobel Prize) in 1995. He was also one of the few people to be simultaneously a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and the Royal Irish Academy. However, he appeared most pleased to have a train, which ran regularly between Hull and London, named after him.

Prof Gray also made notable contributions to our understanding of matter, including discoveries of new liquid crystal phases and their properties. He published more than 300 scientific papers, patents and textbooks. He remained a popular teacher at the University of Hull, becoming a Professor of Organic Chemistry in 1974 and the GF Grant Professor of Chemistry in 1984. In 1990 he left Hull to join Merck, before becoming an independent consultant six years later. In later life he moved to Dorset, where he was able to devote more time to hobbies including gardening and philately.

Prof Gray married Marjorie Canavan in 1953; their daughter Elizabeth predeceased them. Marjorie died two weeks before her husband, who is survived by their two surviving daughters, Veronica and Caroline.