Crystallography matters ... more!

Crystals - known to everybody as gems, snow crystals, or salt grains - are widespread in the nature around us. The investigation of their structure and properties means looking inside the intimate of atom geometries - a look contributing to the scientific development of chemistry, solid state physics, Earth sciences, and even, surprisingly, biology and medicine.

A century has passed since the crystals first revealed their secrets. In the meantime crystallography has become the pillar of the atomic and molecular sciences, showing us the structure of DNA, allowing the comprehension and the development of computer memories, visualizing the formation of proteins within cells, and yielding ever new materials and drugs.

This is why on July 2012, resolution 66/284 of the General Assembly of the United Nations declared 2014 - after 100 years from the awarding of the first Nobel Prize for the discovery of the diffraction of X-rays by crystals - the International Year of Crystallography.

The exhibition organized at the University of Padova wishes to celebrate the theoretical and applied aspects of crystallography on the occasion of the International Year.

See the photos of the exhibition taken during the Opening Ceremony on 5 October 2013

This year's exhibition at Carolina Rediviva, Platonic Solids and Quasicrystals, is all about crystallography and shows how this science has been perceived over time. By collaborating with the Museum of Evolution at Uppsala University, we can exhibit books side by side with real crystals, models of crystals and instruments that have been used to measure the angles of these strange formations that seem to have been cut and polished by human hand whereas in fact they have been shaped by uniform atomic structures.

Welcome on a beautiful journey through this collection of historical scientific books and artifacts.

The workshop "Frontiers of Crystallography" was held in Novosibirsk State University, as a satellite event of the 3rd International Conference "Crystallogenesis and Mineralogy" and included comprehensive lectures and tutorials on the following topics:

1. Crystal growth in Nature, laboratory and industry
• Crystals and crystallization (a general introduction)
• Crystal growth of non-linear optical materials
• Crystal growth of synthetic diamonds
• Crystal growth and experimental mineralogy
• Crystal growth of magnetic materials

2. High-pressure diffraction and Raman microscopy in crystal genesis and mineralogy
• Instrumentation for generating HP, HP-HT and HP-LT conditions
• Instrumentation for data collection using in situ X-ray diffraction at high pressures
• Processing of high-pressure diffraction data
• In situ Raman microscopy and spectroscopy at high pressures: experimental techniques, data analysis and applications

3. Frontiers of crystallography: aperiodic, twinned and disordered structures

Read a report (in English) | Read a press release (in Russian) | See the photo gallery