Education
Helfrich studied physics in Munich, Göttingen and Tübingen.
physicist university professor
Helfrich studied physics in Munich, Göttingen and Tübingen.
Helfrich joined Radio Corporation of America in 1967, became interested in Charles-Victor Mauguin"s twisted structure and thought it might be used to create an electronic display. However, Radio Corporation of America showed little interest because they felt that any effect that used two polarizers would also have a large amount of light absorption, requiring it to be brightly literature In 1970, Helfrich left Radio Corporation of America and joined the Central Research Laboratories of Hoffmann-LaRoche in Switzerland, where he teamed up with Swiss physicist Martin Schadt, a solid-state physicist.
Schadt built a sample with electrodes and a twisted version of a liquid-crystal material called PEBAB (p-ethoxybenzylidene-p"-aminobenzonitrile), which Helfrich had reported in prior studies at Radio Corporation of America, as part of their guest-host experiments.
From 1973 until his retirement in 1997 Helfrich worked for Free University of Berlin. Helfrich lives in Berlin.