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Crystals – familiar to all in gemstones, glittering snowflakes or grains of salt – are everywhere in nature. The study of their inner structure and properties gives us our deepest insights into the arrangement of atoms in the solid state - insights that advance the sciences of chemistry, solid-state physics and, perhaps surprisingly, biology and medicine. A century has passed since crystals first yielded their secrets to X-rays. In that time, crystallography has become the very core of structural science, showing us the structure of DNA, allowing us to understand and fabricate computer memories, showing us how proteins are created in cells, and helping us to design powerful new materials and drugs.
That is why in July 2012, following a proposal from Morocco, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the resolution that 2014 should be the International Year of Crystallography, 100 years since the award of the Nobel Prize for the discovery of X-ray diffraction by crystals.
This website will provide an opportunity for organizations worldwide to coordinate their activities and initiatives.
Learn about crystallography
In the run-up to the International Year of Crystallography, we will feature a number of interesting books, articles, audio or video links that will help to provide an introduction to the marvellous world of crystallography. A complete list of such links can be found in the 'learn' part of this website.
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Tales from the Prep Room: Diffraction
Andrew Marmery of the Royal Institution in London (where Sir W. L. Bragg was Director) demonstrates the principles of diffraction with a laser pen and some bent wire. With a little ingenuity, the characteristic diffraction pattern of the helical structure of DNA is reproduced.
Published: 2011
Filmed: 2011. Duration: 5m 51s
Credits:StoryCog
License: Creative Commons![[W. L. Bragg giving Royal Institution Lecture]](http://www.iycr2014.org/__data/assets/image/0007/77650/bragg_ri.png)
Sir Lawrence Bragg on crystals and gems
A series of six outside broadcasts filmed at the Royal Institution in the late 1950s and early 1960s, The Nature of Things was presented by William Lawrence Bragg with the assistance of Bill Coates. This is an extract from Crystals and Gems, the last show in the first series, exploring the properties and molecular structure of crystals.
Coates recalled Bragg once remarking to him: "never talk about science, show it to them", which is what The Nature of Things set out to do. Like the Christmas Lectures, the programmes were structured around a series of demonstrations and were filmed as a lecture in the Ri's theatre. Although the filming took place with an audience of adults, the series was aimed at children and broadcast on children's television. As he states at the end of the series, he hoped it would provoke "deep interest in the science of everyday things".
Broadcast on BBC Television in 1959. Duration: 17m 22s
© The Royal Institution. Credits: The Royal Institution /BBC
A new open-access journal for 2014
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One of the main initiatives of the International Union of Crystallography to celebrate the International Year is the launch of IUCrJ, a new peer-reviewed journal.
IUCrJ will be a fully open-access journal. Its aim will be to capture high profile papers on all aspects of the sciences and technologies supported by IUCr via its Commissions, including emerging fields where structural results underpin the science reported in the paper. The journal will publish its inaugural issues in 2014 to coincide with the International Year.
Five Main Editors and 20 Co-editors have been appointed to the Editorial Board. The Editor-in-chief of the journal will be Samar Hasnain, and the Main Editors are: Ted Baker (Biology and Medicine), Richard Catlow (Materials and Computation), Gautam Desiraju (Chemistry and Crystal Engineering), Sine Larsen (Neutron and Synchrotron Science and Technology) and John Spence (Physics and Free Electron Laser Science and Technology).
More details of IUCrJ can be found at http://www.iucrj.org. Authors wishing to submit an article to one of the inaugural issues of the journal may do so at http://www.iucrj.org/m/services/submit.html.