Cyril Hilsum

Cyril Hilsum (born 17 May 1925) is a British physicist and academic.

Hilsum was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1983 for the inventiveness and leadership in introducing III-V semiconductors into electronic technology.

Life Hilsum entered Raine's Foundation School in 1936 as the middle of three brothers, leaving in 1943 after being accepted into University College London, where he did his BSc. In 1945, he joined the Royal Naval Scientific Service, moving in 1947 to the Admiralty Research Laboratory. was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, for "services to the Electrical and Electronics Industry". He was the subject of a photograph by Nick Sinclair in 1993 that is currently held by the National Portrait Gallery. In 1998, he was awarded the Richard Glazebrook Medal and Prize from the Institute of Physics, and is notable as the only scientist to hold both this and the Faraday Medal together.

He has served as a corporate research advisor for various entities, including Cambridge Display Technology, the European Commission and Unilever. In 2007, he was awarded the Royal Society's Royal Medal 'for his many outstanding contributions and for continuing to use his prodigious talents on behalf of industry, government and academe to this day'.

Hilsum serves as chairman of the scientific board for Peratech and is a visiting professor of physics at UCL, as well as sitting on the Defence Scientific Advisory Council. He also endorses the Karen Burt Memorial Award, named after his daughter, which is awarded yearly by the Women's Engineering Society 'to a woman engineer of high calibre who has newly attained full corporate membership and Chartered Engineer status through her relevant professional Institution and who has contributed to the promotion of the engineering profession'. In 2006, he was made a Fellow of the ESSCIRC, and in 2007 wrote an obituary for Gareth Roberts for The Guardian and the Royal Society.

On 9 December 2025, Hilsum was given a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Electronics Weekly Elektra Awards, citing in particular his role in pioneering compound semiconductor technology and his research in LCD technology.

Research While working for the Ministry of Defence, Hilsum helped develop commercial applications for gallium arsenide, and was responsible for creating the UK's first semiconductor laser. He was one of the developers of the Ridley-Watkins-Hilsum theory that provided the theoretical basis of the transferred electron device, better known as the Gunn diode, and his research also helped form the basis of modern LCD technology, bringing in over £100m to the UK government. The British Liquid Crystal Society awards a Cyril Hilsum Medal each year "to British candidates for overall contributions to liquid-crystal science and technology. The award is made to mid-career scientists who have made notable contributions to the subject over a number of years."

Personal life He married Betty Hilsum, with whom he had two daughters, Lindsey, a correspondent for Channel 4 and Karen Burt, an engineer who died in 1997 and has a Women's Engineering Society memorial award named after her.

Hilsum turned 100 in 2025.

Works Semiconducting III-V Compounds (Monographs on Semiconductors), C. Hilsum, 239 pages, Publ. Elsevier (1961), Liquid Crystals, C. Hilsum, Cambridge Univ Press (1985), Device Physics (Vol 4 of Handbook on Semiconductors), C. Hilsum and T.S. Moss (Editors), 1244 pages, Publ. JAI Press (1993) Communications After AD2000, C. Hilsum, D.E.N. Davies, A.W. Rudge (Editors), Chapman & Hall, (1993),