A new method to visualise the microscopic world was pioneered in 1912. This was the birth of x-ray crystallography. Max von Laue, a German physics professor, was performing experiments with the relatively recently discovered x-rays.
Nov 7, 2012In the audience in Cambridge in November 1912 was the physicist C. T. R. Wilson, whose work using cloud chambers to track cosmic rays earned him
The molecular world beyond the microscope
A new method to visualise the microscopic world was pioneered in 1912. This was the birth of x-ray crystallography. Max von Laue, a German physics professor, was performing experiments with the relatively recently discovered x-rays.
X-ray crystallography shows the arrangement of water molecules in ice, revealing the hydrogen bonds (1) that hold the solid together. Few other methods can determine the structure of matter with such precision ( resolution ). Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays in 1895, just as the studies of crystal symmetry were being completed.
The field of crystallography started with the discovery of X-rays by Röntgen who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for this discovery in 1901. Max von Laue followed this by investigating the interaction of X-rays with crystals producing a diffraction pattern and he received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1914.
However, Bragg is known as the father of modern x-ray crystallography for two main reasons- the advancements he made in understanding crystal structureand his mathematical model for x-ray reflection which is referred to as Bragg's law. References
Kathleen Lonsdale was a research student of William Henry Bragg, who with his son Lawrence founded the science of X-ray crystallography at the beginning of the 20th century. She is known for both her experimental and theoretical work.
These four scientists—
Crick, Franklin, Watson, and Wilkins—codiscovered the double-helix structure of DNA, which formed the basis for modern biotechnology. At King’s College London, Rosalind Franklin obtained images of DNA using X-ray crystallography, an idea first broached by Maurice Wilkins.