50 Years Ago

International Tables for X-ray Crystallography. General Editor: Dame Kathleen Lonsdale — The fifty years which have elapsed since the discovery of X-ray diffraction by crystals have witnessed the development of X-ray crystallographic techniques as a structure-determining tool of unprecedented power and catholicity of application. By it the complexities of mineral structures have been rationalized ... and the elaborate architecture of the giant globular proteins mapped out. Fortunately, it was recognized early that this diversity would make discipline in the presentation of results, and uniformity of nomenclature and convention particularly desirable. The first attempt to provide such an authoritative basis was by the Internationale Tabellen zur Bestimmung von Kristallstrukturen of 1935. In 1946 the International Union of Crystallography decided on a complete revision and extension of these tables under the general editorship of Dame Kathleen Lonsdale. Two volumes ... have already appeared; Volume 3, dealing with physical and chemical tables, represents the completion of the 1946 project ... No X-ray crystallographical laboratory worthy of the name will fail to add this magnificently printed and luxuriously bound volume to the two they already should possess. Struther Arnott

From Nature 26 January 1963

100 Years Ago

It is not at all difficult to measure the ionisation produced by the radiation reflected by crystals, as indeed Prof. Barkla has already suggested. Using a sheet of mica and a pencil of a few millimetres diameter, I find it possible to follow with an ionisation chamber the movement of the reflected spot while the mirror is rotated. W. H. Bragg

From Nature 23 January 1913