Denis Weaire

Denis Weaire

Denis Lawrence Weaire (FRS) is an Irish physicist, who is an emeritus professor of Trinity College Dublin.

Educated at the Belfast Royal Academy and Clare College, Cambridge, he has since 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 Philosophy in Trinity. 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.

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.