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A Poonful of Science: celebrating the career of Prof. Wilson Poon

Towards the end of December, family, friends, and colleagues gathered to celebrate the career of Prof. Wilson Poon, who has recently retired after 35 years at The University of Edinburgh.

16 January 2026

Wilson founded the Edinburgh Complex Fluids Partnership (ECFP) in 2012, and has been a member of the board and wider academic team ever since. The “Poonful of Science” workshop was a reflection on Wilson’s career and the fascinating, world-leading research he has led and enabled, as well as a look to the future to consider “what next?” for soft matter physics. Talks explored Wilson’s contributions to the understanding of aggregation and rheology of soft matter and biological systems, which have led to many new and fundamental insights for both academic and industrial scientists and the development of new techniques such as Dynamic Differential Microscopy and Rheo-confocal Microscopy.

Dave Fairhurst is in front of a whiteboard, presenting slides on some of his recent work.
Dr David Fairhurst, one of Wilson's first PhD students and now ECFP’s Chief Scientific Officer, discussed some of his recent work on using free energy landscapes to predict behaviour in the three-component water-ethanol-oil system Ouzo.

Not one to be confined to a single discipline, we also heard from Wilson’s collaborators in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology and the School of Divinity, with whom he has worked on investigating “Renaissance Goo” and developing a Theology of Science.

Professor Wilson Poon is in front of a whiteboard presenting some of his science.
Wilson drew the workshop to a close with a talk titled “From self-assembly to self-disassembly: A trajectory in the soft matter-biological physics phase space”, which included an introduction to new results published in 2025 on how E. coli bacteria seemingly ‘plan’ one aspect of their post-mortem life.

We extend our thanks and gratitude to Angela Muir, Job Thijssen, and Dave Fairhurst for organising A Poonful of Science, and credit Job for the photos included above.

From everyone at ECFP, we wish Wilson a happy and productive retirement!

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