"Intriguing Issues in Soft Matter Physics: Irrational Self-Assembly and Anchoring Transitions in Liquid Crystals" Mohan Srinivasarao, Georgia Institute of Technology In this talk I intend to discuss two issues: (a) Breath Figure formation on volatile fluid surfaces to produce a very ordered array of holes in a polymer film and (b) Behavior of nematic liquid crystals on surfaces prepared by photopolymerization. Irrational Self-Assembly: When a cold solid or a liquid surface comes in contact with moist air, moisture condenses on the surface, forming water droplets that grow with time to form patterns on the surface. Such phenomena, referred to as "breath figures", have been studied in detail, starting with the early works of Lord Rayleigh, Baker and Aitken , and more recently by Knobler and coworkers who demonstrated that it was possible to form a hexagonally ordered array of water droplets on a liquid surface as condensation proceeded. I will discuss the use of "breath figures" to form three-dimensional, ordered macroporous arrays with controllable dimensions. Anchoring Transitions in Liquid Crystals: A nematic fluid in contact with a solid substrate has a preferred direction of alignment, often referred to as anchoring. Transitions from one anchoring to another, for example, from normal alignment (homeotropic) to parallel alignment, are referred to as anchoring transitions. Anchoring transitions often occur close to a bulk phase transition, making such a transition far from bulk phase transitions a rarity. I will discuss our most recent discovery of how minor changes in the chemistry of the side chain in a polyacrylate film lead to drastically different anchoring conditions of a nematic fluid far from any bulk phase transition. It is worthwhile to point out that we can tune this anchoring over a wide temperature range.