A year to crystallography
100 years ago Max von Laue received the Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering that crystals diffuse X-rays. In 1912 he discovered working with a zinc sulfide glass: X-rays observed that a diffraction model was formed when crossing this crystal. The news of this discovery was an incentive for father and son Bragg, who worked on X-ray fire. They understood and proposed, in 1913, what that model was and how it could be interpreted to know how the atoms of the crystals are arranged. In 1915 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics "for his contributions to the analysis of the structure of crystals by X-rays". Since then, 21 other Nobel laureates have recognized their contributions in the field of crystallography.
The United Nations has named 2014 the International Year of Crystallography as the International Year of Crystallography. With this denomination they want to highlight the importance of crystallography, historical and current, as an indispensable and powerful tool to understand the structure of matter. Perutz and Kendrew discovered the structure of hemoglobin, that of insulin Crowfootek, and Watson and Crick, that of DNA. Because when we talk about matter, we also talk about the matter that makes up life.
Crystallography is used in many fields of science and technology: it is used by those who synthesize new materials, but also those who synthesize new medicines; it serves to know inside the giant crystals of Naica and to understand the structure and function of tiny proteins study crystallized proteins.
"The influence of crystallography is omnipresent in our daily lives," the United Nations says in its credential. We have approached the window of geology and stories to the Year of Crystallography, in this issue and in the next. The spectacular cave of Naica, father and son Braggs and Dorothy Crowfoot, pioneer in the crystallography of biological molecules, will be the protagonists.
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