2014: The international year of crystallography
- PDF / 71,068 Bytes
- 2 Pages / 612 x 792 pts (letter) Page_size
- 8 Downloads / 165 Views
: The International Year of Crystallography M. V. Kovalchuk National Research Centre “Kurchatov Institute”, pl. Akademika Kurchatova 1, Moscow, 123182 Russia Shubnikov Institute of Crystallography, Russian Academy of Sciences, Leninskii pr. 59, Moscow, 119333 Russia email: [email protected] Received June 24, 2014
Abstract—In 2014 the international scientific community widely celebrated the year of crystallography. This is quite natural, because crystallography holds a particular place among the other sciences. Currently, the most significant scientific findings and technological breakthroughs are made at the intersection of sciences. In other words, the system of highly specialized sciences is making way for interdisciplinary studies. The crys tallography methodology developed from copying natural objects to the artificial design of objects having no analogs in nature. This became possible because crystallography is much more than a simple sum of its com ponents; it is convergent in essence, combining analytical methods and achievements in geology, chemistry, physics, and (in the modern stage) biology. DOI: 10.1134/S1063774514060157
Crystallography as a science originated several hundreds of years ago from mineralogy. At the end of the 19th century, E.S. Fedorov introduced 230 sym metry space groups which described all varieties of crystalline shapes. Thus, crystallography became part of mathematics. The next goal of researchers was to find out the composition and properties of crystals. As a result, crystallography became part of chemistry. Later on, when the phenomenon of Xray diffraction from crystals was revealed, crystallography became a part of physics: X rays made it possible to see the arrangement of atoms and complex threedimensional structure of the entire world. New disciplines arose: Xray crystallography, crystal physics, and Xray phys ics and optics. In the middle of the 20th century, the application of Xray diffraction in crystallography actually led to the birth of molecular biology (trans formed it from a descriptive science into a mathemat ically and physically justified system of scientific knowledge). The development of crystallography in Russia and in the Soviet Union was always of great significance for world science. The founders of Russian crystallogra phy, along with Fedorov, were V.A. Vernadsky; G.V. Wulf; and, finally, A.V. Shubnikov. The piezo electric effect in natural quartz, which was studied by Shubnikov before the Great Patriotic War, turned out to be extremely important for military applications. Under his guidance, 50 tons of piezoelectric Rochelle salt crystals were grown during the war, which made it possible to equip signal troops with efficient commu nication tools. This work of researchers at the Institute of Crystallography, aimed at developing a commercial technology of growing artificial piezoelectric and optical quartz crystals by hydrothermal synthesis, was
awarded a Lenin prize and remains the basis of com mercial technology of synthetic quartz produ
Data Loading...
