Cyril Hilsum

Prof. Cyril Hilsum CBE FRS FREng DEng CPhys HonFInstP (born 1925) is a British scientist, with a long career in solid-state physics and semiconductors.

He was schooled at Raine's Foundation School in London. He obtained a BSc and PhD from University College London.

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Career

• Admiralty Research Laboratory 1947-1950
• Services Electronics Research Laboratory (SERL) 1950-1964.
• Royal Radar Establishment 1964-1983.
• Director of Research at GEC from 1983-1992.

Whilst working for the Ministry of Defence Cyril Hilsum was instrumental in the development of gallium arsenide as a semiconductor material. Applications of GaAs included transistors and lasers. He was involved in the use of indium antimonide as an infrared detector material, and carried out early work on flat-panel displays (LCDs).

Cyril Hilsum is a trustee of the Rank Prize Fund (for optoelectronics). He has served as corporate research adviser for the European Commission, Unilever and Cambridge Display Technology.

Honours

• Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Engineering (for introducing III-V semiconductors into electronic technology),
• Fellow of the Royal Society (1979)
• Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (1978)
• Fellow of the IEEE
• Max Born Medal and Prize from the Institute of Physics in 1987
• Faraday Medal from the Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1988
• He was awarded the CBE in 1990
• Honorary DEng from Sheffield University in 1992
• Glazebrook Medal and Prize from the Institute of Physics in 1997,
• Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Physics in 2001
• Royal Medal in 2007

Personal

Hilsum's daughter, Karen Burt, died in 1997. He has endowed an award for young female engineers in her name.

Bibliography

• Semiconducting III-V Compounds (Monographs on Semiconductors), C. Hilsum, 239 pages, Publ. Elsevier (1961), ISBN 0-08-009499-6
• Liquid Crystals, C. Hilsum, Cambridge Univ Press (1985), ISBN 0-521-30465-2
• Device Physics (Vol 4 of Handbook on Semiconductors), C. Hilsum and T.S. Moss (Editors), 1244 pages, Publ. JAI Press (1993) ISBN 0-444-88813-6
• Communications After AD2000, C. Hilsum, D.E.N. Davies, A.W. Rudge (Editors), Chapman & Hall, (1993), ISBN 0-412-49550-3