Liquid-crystal science from 1888 to 1922: building a revolution.

The saga of liquid crystals started with their discovery in 1888 by the botanist Friedrich Reinitzer, who unexpectedly observed "two melting points" for crystals extracted from the root of a carrot. At the end of the nineteenth century, most scientists did not believe in the existence of "liquid crystals" as promoted by the crystallographer Otto Lehmann. The controversies were very vivid; to the point that the recognition of mesomorphic states of matter by the scientific community required more than two decades. In the end, liquid crystals have changed our vision of matter by shattering the three-state paradigm. Since the mid-1970s, liquid crystals have revolutionized the worldwide information-display industry and now play a host of key roles in various technologies.

Bioinspired supramolecular liquid crystals.

A brief account on the historical events leading to the discovery of self-assembling dendrons that generate self-organizable supramolecular dendrimers, or supramolecular polymers, and self-organizable dendronized polymers is provided. These building blocks were accessed by an accelerated design strategy that involves structural and retrostructural analysis of periodic and quasi-periodic assemblies. This design strategy mediated the discovery of porous helical supramolecular structures that self-assembled from dendritic dipeptides. Helical porous columns are the closest mimics of biologically related structures, such as tobacco mosaic virus coat, porous transmembrane proteins, porous pathogens and antibiotics. It is expected that this concept will allow one to investigate the structural origin of functions in synthetic supramolecular materials.