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Laureates arrive for the traditional Nobel Prize banquet at the Stockholm City Hall on December 10, 2013. In total, 28 Nobel prized discoveries have been associated with crystallography, among them this year's awards for Chemistry and Physics.

There once was a dark and distant time when we only understood molecules as equations of letters and numbers. With the advent of crystallography the science of how matter is arranged we learned how to visualize molecules in 3D, helping us make everything from better medicines to stronger materials. Despite that huge advance, if you stopped someone in the street and asked them what crystallography was, chances are you would get a blank stare. To help raise awareness, and to celebrate a century of amazing discoveries, UNESCO has declared 2014 to be the International Year of Crystallography. Heres a bluffers guide to the topic. 1. It starts with X-rays

Normally when you want to magnify things, you use a microscope. There is, however, a limit to the smallness of things you can see, namely the wavelength of the light youre using. Since visible light has a frequency of between roughly 400 and 700 nanometers, it is unable to detect atoms, which are separated by merely 0.1 nanometers. X-rays, on the other hand, have just the right frequency.

2. Crystals are used to create diffractions

Unfortunately, we dont have good enough lenses to produce x-ray microscopes capable of studying molecules. So scientists have to beam X-rays onto molecules, which shatter the rays, just as light is reflected when it hits any object. The shattered rays called the diffraction are then reassembled into an image by a computer program. But since the diffraction of a single molecule would be weak to the point of unintelligibility, scientists get the molecules theyre studying to clump together into crystal form. This highly ordered structure, made up of vast amounts of molecules, makes x-ray diffractions the main tool of crystallography easier to study.

3. So why chose 2014 for the International Year of Crystallography?

The International Year of Crystallography celebrates the centennial of the Nobel Prize of Max Von Laue, the first scientist to diffract x-rays with a crystal. However, the first person to solve a molecular structure that of NaCl, or table salt was the Brit William Lawrence Bragg. His equation to translate the diffraction into a structure, Braggs Law, is still in use today. In 1915, at age 25, he became the youngest Nobel laureate, when he jointly received the prize with his father William Henry Bragg. The Braggs went on to create a dynasty of groundbreaking crystallographers at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge.

This Royal Institute video describes the legacy of William Lawrence Bragg and his disciples:

4. Crystallography was crucial to one of the great discoveries of the 20th century

Originally posted here:
So 2014 Is International Crystallography Year