George Sheldrick transformed and then ruled chemical crystallography model refinement. He extended his software work into protein crystallography with a sequence of initiatives such as anomalous scatterer site determination and full matrix inversion for protein model coordinates and atomic displacement parameter uncertainty estimations. Throughout his career, George Sheldrick took teaching crystallography very seriously. He also worked closely with manufacturers. He chose Acta Cryst. A as the venue for his ‘A short history of SHELX’ article which attracted a very large number of citations and led to a huge rise in Acta Cryst A‘s impact factor, the stuff of legend.

We expect articles in this Tribute to connect with George Sheldrick’s pioneering work and to be relevant to all these domains, from foundations to structural chemistry and biology, including software, instrumentation and methods, as well as teaching.