Abstract
X-ray crystal structure analysis can now be seen as a special kind of microscopy which is being extended to the recognition and examination of many kinds of ordered structure more general than crystals and which leads to their synthesis or construction by various methods. Electron microscopy and many other techniques now combine to give a coherent science of structure at the scale range of Ångstroms to microns, atoms to assemblies visible to the eye, which should continue to be called “crystallography” although it overlaps with nanotechnology, molecular biology, and solid state physics. Most generally, “a crystal is a structure the description of which is much smaller than the structure itself” and this view leads to the consideration of structures as carriers of information and on to wider concerns with growth, form, morphogenesis, and life itself.
Nulla cogente natura, sed concursu quodam fortuito atomorum
Cicero [2] (106–43 bc) De Natura Deorum 1:24
(Not by teleology, but by the chance association of atoms).
Structural Chemistry 2002, 13(3/4):215–220.
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References
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Acknowledgments
On this special occasion it is appropriate to acknowledge, as well as my immediate colleagues, especially those who have given me a congenial home at Birkbeck, the long-range influences of three of the great polymaths and encyclopedists who continue to affect us with their perceptions of science and civilisation. These are, Titus Lucretius Carus [36] (ca. 99–55 BC), Denis Diderot (1713–1784), and John Desmond Bernal (1901–1971). Modern crystallography has taken place within the Republic of Science, the community of those who seek to acquire “reliable knowledge” about the natural world by verifiable experimentation rather than by revelation and it has been a great privilege to have taken a small part in it.
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Mackay, A.L. (2015). Generalized Crystallography. In: Hargittai, I., Hargittai, B. (eds) Science of Crystal Structures. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19827-9_4
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