News and Progress

Pioneer in the Study of Modern Liquid Crystal Display Gives Portion of Award Money to MU Physics

Feb. 5, 2007

COLUMBIA, Mo. – James L. Fergason has an unusually large collection of mood rings, watches, calculators and flat panel displays. Friends have jokingly given him the rings because Fergason, a graduate of the University of Missouri-Columbia, is known as a pioneer in the study of modern liquid crystal display, the technology that makes color-changing mood rings and LCD television possible.
       
Last summer, Fergason was given the Lemelson-MIT Award, the nation’s largest and arguably most prestigious prize for inventors. The award included a $500,000 monetary prize, of which Fergason has gifted $200,000 to the MU Department of Physics and Astronomy. This gift is an addition to the James L. and Dora D. Fergason Fund for Excellence in Physics, created in 2001. Fergason said that when he accepted the award, he already planned to give the money to help others.

“Providing the opportunity to excel in the hard sciences has been difficult because of a lack of interest on the part of society and an opportunity to have the funding to attract students to the required discipline of a career in science,” said Fergason. “I hope this is a building block in a physics department that excels and meets this need.”
      
Fergason’s gift will be used to benefit faculty and students studying physics.
       
“Like all major research universities, MU is in an arms race to attract and retain the very brightest researchers and students” said Michael O’Brien, dean of the College of Arts and Science. “Jim Fergason’s gift will allow us to compete successfully at the national and international levels.”

An active inventor, Fergason has more than 150 U.S. patents and 500 foreign patents and was inducted into the National Inventors’ Hall of Fame in 1998. He didn’t discover liquid crystals, but he did become one of the first to understand what they could do and invent some of their practical uses, including digital watches, calculators and forehead thermometers and flat panel TV. Today, he continues to work as an independent inventor and is currently working on projects with flat-panel televisions, computer monitors, and rear-projection television and presentation projectors.

Fergason graduated from MU with a B.S. in physics in 1956 and received an honorary doctorate of science in 2001.