Acta Crystallographica Section A

Foundations of Crystallography

Volume 69, Part 1 (January 2013)

Cover illustration: William Lawrence Bragg at Cambridge (courtesy of the Royal Institution of Great Britain), shown with the indexed diffraction pattern for zinc blende [Proc. Cambridge Philos. Soc. (1913), 17, 43-57], the Cavendish Laboratory and a stamp from 1975 commemorating the 60th anniversary of the award of the Nobel Prize in 1915 to W. H. and W. L. Bragg (copyright Sweden Post Stamps).

Bragg centennial
research papers
short communications
international union of crystallography

Bragg centennial

Acta Cryst. (2013). A69, 1-4 [ doi:10.1107/S0108767312048490 ]

Celebrating 100 years of X-ray crystallography

S. W. Wilkins

Synopsis: A collection of articles contributed by speakers at the Bragg Centennial Symposium held in Adelaide on 6 December 2012 are introduced.

Online 18 December 2012

Acta Cryst. (2013). A69, 5-7 [ doi:10.1107/S0108767312047514 ]

A tribute to W. L. Bragg by his younger daughter

P. Thomson

Synopsis: A tribute to W. L. Bragg by his younger daughter is presented.

Online 5 December 2012

Acta Cryst. (2013). A69, 8-9 [ doi:10.1107/S0108767312046879 ]

Sir Lawrence Bragg

M. F. Perutz

Synopsis: An extract from the obituary for Sir Lawrence Bragg by M. F. Perutz [Nature (London), (1971), 233, 74-76] is given.

Online 5 December 2012

Acta Cryst. (2013). A69, 10-15 [ doi:10.1107/S0108767312031133 ]

Background to the Nobel Prize to the Braggs

A. Liljas

Synopsis: W. L. Bragg would have missed the Nobel Prize if his father had been awarded the prize together with von Laue in 1914. Fortunately, the Nobel Committee for Physics was aware of his contributions and decided to award the prize to W. H. Bragg together with his son in 1915, when they were both nominated.

Online 5 December 2012

Acta Cryst. (2013). A69, 16-24 [ doi:10.1107/S0108767312034356 ]

Lawrence Bragg's interest in the deformation of metals and 1950-1953 in the Cavendish - a worm's-eye view

A. Kelly

Synopsis: A research student's view of life in W. L. Bragg's Cavendish Laboratory from 1950-1953 is given. The use of the bubble raft in illustrating the properties of dislocations in crystals is described.

Online 5 December 2012

Acta Cryst. (2013). A69, 25-33 [ doi:10.1107/S0108767312046296 ]

Lawrence Bragg, microdiffraction and X-ray lasers

J. C. H. Spence

Synopsis: The history of Bragg's law, life and work is reviewed with particular reference to the development of X-ray and electron microdiffraction. A summary of recent work applying the hard X-ray free-electron laser to problems in structural biology is given.

Online 18 December 2012

Acta Cryst. (2013). A69, 34-36 [ doi:10.1107/S0108767312042924 ]

The Bragg legacy: early days in macromolecular crystallography

B. W. Matthews

Synopsis: W. L. Bragg's critical role in encouraging, supporting and establishing the field of large-molecule crystallography is reviewed.

Online 5 December 2012

Acta Cryst. (2013). A69, 37-44 [ doi:10.1107/S0108767312036021 ]

The early development of neutron diffraction: science in the wings of the Manhattan Project

T. E. Mason, T. J. Gawne, S. E. Nagler, M. B. Nestor and J. M. Carpenter

Synopsis: Early neutron diffraction experiments performed in 1944 using the first nuclear reactors are described.

Online 5 December 2012

Acta Cryst. (2013). A69, 45-50 [ doi:10.1107/S0108767312047587 ]

The significance of Bragg's law in electron diffraction and microscopy, and Bragg's second law

C. J. Humphreys

Synopsis: The significance of Bragg's law in electron diffraction is discussed, with particular emphasis on the differences between X-ray and electron diffraction. Recent developments in X-ray instrumentation in electron microscopy which enable single atoms to be imaged and identified using X-ray analysis within an electron microscope are described.

Online 5 December 2012

Acta Cryst. (2013). A69, 51-59 [ doi:10.1107/S0108767312050453 ]

Evolution of diffraction methods for solving crystal structures

W. A. Hendrickson

Synopsis: The practices for determining the atomic structures in crystals have changed greatly over the century since Lawrence Bragg introduced the trial-and-error method by which he solved structures for rocksalt, iron pyrite and other salts and minerals. Structure determinations for biological macromolecules first borrowed from the small-molecule tradition that evolved, notably adopting isomorphous replacement; subsequently, however, new approaches have grown to dominate, notably anomalous diffraction and molecular replacement.

Online 18 December 2012

Acta Cryst. (2013). A69, 60-62 [ doi:10.1107/S0108767312050441 ]

Early days in drug discovery by crystallography - personal recollections

P. M. Colman

Synopsis: The neuraminidase inhibitors for treatment of influenza are an early example of drug discovery by crystallography.

Online 18 December 2012

research papers

Acta Cryst. (2013). A69, 63-74 [ doi:10.1107/S010876731203629X ]

An algorithm for the arithmetic classification of multilattices

G. Indelicato

Synopsis: A novel procedure for the characterization and the arithmetic classification of monoatomic multilattices in any dimension is proposed. The algorithm may be coded to provide an automatic classification procedure.

Online 14 November 2012

Acta Cryst. (2013). A69, 75-90 [ doi:10.1107/S0108767312041657 ]

Equivalence of superspace groups

S. van Smaalen, B. J. Campbell and H. T. Stokes

Synopsis: The standard settings of (3 + d)-dimensional superspace groups are determined for a series of modulated compounds, especially concentrating on d = 2 and 3. The coordinate transformation in superspace is discussed in view of its implications in physical space.

Online 14 November 2012

Acta Cryst. (2013). A69, 91-97 [ doi:10.1107/S0108767312044601 ]

Bent perfect crystals as X-ray focusing polychromators in symmetric Laue geometry

J.-P. Guigay, C. Ferrero, D. Bhattacharyya, O. Mathon and S. Pascarelli

Synopsis: The focusing properties of a bent Laue polychromator crystal are investigated by a semi-analytical approach based on the dynamical diffraction theory.

Online 30 November 2012

Acta Cryst. (2013). A69, 98-107 [ doi:10.1107/S0108767312040469 ]

On the use of the C map in Patterson deconvolution procedures

R. Caliandro, B. Carrozzini, G. L. Cascarano, G. Comunale and C. Giacovazzo

Synopsis: The C map has been combined with implication transformation and vector-superposition techniques to improve the Patterson deconvolution method.

Online 14 November 2012

Acta Cryst. (2013). A69, 108-118 [ doi:10.1107/S0108767312042535 ]

Continuous X-ray diffractive field in protein nanocrystallography

R. A. Dilanian, V. A. Streltsov, H. M. Quiney and K. A. Nugent

Synopsis: Structural imperfections play an important role in the formation of the diffraction patterns of membrane protein nanocrystals. Detailed analysis of the diffraction phenomenon shows that the scattering from such nanocrystals should be regarded in terms of a continuous diffractive field rather than a formulation based on discrete Bragg reflections.

Online 16 November 2012