Abstract
A brief account is given of the history of X-ray crystallography from its beginning in 1912 to the present time. Particular emphasis is placed on the phase problem, the major obstacle in the path leading from the observed X-ray diffraction pattern to the desired crystal structure. The essential role which mathematics plays in resolving this problem is also stressed.
Keywords
- Diffraction Intensity
- Joint Probability Distribution
- Electron Density Function
- Structure Invariant
- Conditional Probability Distribution
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Structural Chemistry 1990, 1(6):617–620.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Science Foundation grant number CHE-8822296.
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Hauptman, H.A. (2015). History of X-Ray Crystallography. In: Hargittai, I., Hargittai, B. (eds) Science of Crystal Structures. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19827-9_2
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