Dr. Rudolf Eidenschink, President of Nematel GmbH, Mainz, Germany, receives the 2011 Karl Ferdinand Braun Prize from the Society for Information Display (SID) during SID Display Week, their premier global event held in Los Angeles, USA. The honorary prize is the top distinction awarded by SID for outstanding achievement in the field of display technology, in this case liquid crystals for LCDs. 

Rudolf Eidenschink worked in LC research at Merck from 1975 to 1987, where he actively helped pave the way for the success of liquid crystals technology. He discovered, and for many years worked on, phenylcyclohexane and bicyclohexane liquid crystals, which formed the basis of the Merck liquid crystals business. He later set the foundation for the development of innovative LC displays based on TFT (thin-film transistor) liquid crystals.

• Substituted Phenylcyclohexanes—A New Class of Liquid-Crystalline Compounds
  R. Eidenschink, D. Erdmann, J. Krause, L. Pohl,
  Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. Eng. 1977, 16(2), 100.
  DOI: 10.1002/anie.197701001