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

From gigantic and exotic cave formations to everyday ingredients such as salt and sugar, crystals are all around us. In our latest special exhibition – Crystals: Beauty, Science, Structure – we look at the history of the study of crystals, an endeavour which has prized their mysterious and natural beauty, as well as probed their fundamental atomic structures.

In the middle ages, natural minerals were thought to carry occult properties, perhaps suggested by their startling array of colours and geometric forms. These regular forms promised a special insight into nature and from the 17th century onwards they were exactly measured and their symmetries exhaustively classified.

At the turn of the 20th century even deeper secrets were illuminated by the ground-breaking technique of x-ray crystallography. Today, crystallography is the hidden science behind many aspects of our lives.

This year, 2013, celebrates the centenary of the pioneering work of father and son William and Lawrence Bragg, which laid the foundations for the science of x-ray crystallography. The International Year of Crystallography takes place during 2014.

“L’ENIGMA ESCHER- PARADOSSI GRAFICI TRA ARTE E GEOMETRIA” is the title of a major retrospective exhibition of the work of Maurits Cornelis Escher, on display in Reggio Emilia until 23 March 2014.

The exhibition presents the work of the Dutch graphic artist from his debut on the scene to his latest years, bringing together 130 works, including lithographs, etchings and drawings, on loan from museums, libraries and national institutes – among which the Galleria d’Arte Moderna of Rome and the Fondazione Wolfsoniana of Genoa – as well as from some important, private collections.

A special section is dedicated to tilings, with a panel illustrating the 17 crystallographic planar groups and some original examples of Escher's plane-filling drawings.

The exhibition will then move to Caraglio (Cuneo, Italy), where it will be on display from 29 March to 29 June.

The exhibition is included in the events for IYCr2014 celebrations in Italy. 

Read the press release mentioning the connection of the exhibition with IYCr2014 (in Italian)

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.

Silver Jubilee of NCCS and IYCr2014 celebrations

Prof. Venki Ramakrishnan, Cambridge, UK

The Use of Recent Advances in Electron Microscopy to Study Ribosomes at High Resolution

 6-January-2014

10:30 am

 Main Auditorium

National Centre for Cell Science, Pune

It is a one-day event with open access (no registration fee), where scientists working on some synchrotron radiation facilities meet users and potential users to improve the mutual collaborations in the fields of time and space resolved X-ray absorption and scattering techniques. The workshop will be held at Centro della Innovazione (Room 20), Università degli Studi di Torino, Via Quarello 15/A, Turin. 

Participation is free, registration is required: please send an e-mail to claudio.garino@unito.it

Can we see a molecule and why do we wish to see it?

Lecture provided by prof. Maciej Kubicki,  Dept. of Crystallography, Faculty of Chemistry, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland

Führung für KindergartenpädagogInnen und LehrerInnen

Donnerstag, 16. Jänner 2014, 16.30 Uhr

Vera Hammer, Leiterin der Mineraliensammlung, Monika Müller, Museumspädagogik

Adresse: Naturhistorisches Museum, Maria-Theresien-Platz, 1010 Wien

Anmeldung 01/52177/335 (Montag 14.00 bis 17.00, Mittwoch bis Freitag 9.00 bis 12.00)

www.nhm-wien.ac.at/ausstellung/angebote_fuer_schulen__kindergaerten/anmeldung

Workshop für LehrerInnen „Was steckt im Handy?“

Donnerstag, 16. Jänner 2014, 18.30 Uhr

Britta Bookhagen, Konzept und Broschüre zum Rohstoffkoffer

Adresse: Naturhistorisches Museum, Maria-Theresien-Platz, 1010 Wien

Anmeldung 01/52177/335 (Montag 14.00 bis 17.00, Mittwoch bis Freitag 9.00 bis 12.00)

www.nhm-wien.ac.at/ausstellung/angebote_fuer_schulen__kindergaerten/anmeldung

Neuauflage des Rohstoffkoffers „Was steckt im Handy“Unterrichts-Materialkoffer für LehrerInnen naturwissenschaftlicher Fächer. SchülerInnen wird anhand eines alltäglichen Gebrauchsgegenstandes ein greifbarer Einblick in die Herkunft, Verwendung und das Recycling unserer Rohstoffe ermöglicht. Der Schaukasten enthält Mineralien, Steine und industrielle Rohstoffe. Eine 80-seitige Unterrichtsbroschüre bietet gebrauchsfertige Arbeitsbögen für den Schulunterricht und fachliche Hintergrundinformation für LehrerInnen.

Kosten: 70 Euro / Klassensatz (5 Koffer, 1 Broschüre)

• 3 collections of mineralogy in one day
• Art and crystallography
• Exhibition "Crystallography in everyday life"

An introduction to the magic world of crystallography will be presented to 6-10 years old children and their parents. In a hands-on Lab, melting, sublimation and crystallization experiments will help us to understand what is a crystal and how we can get it. We will go deep into to the symmetry of the crystals and we will synthesize our own snowflake crystal... with papers! 

See the photo gallery of the event 

This event is part of activities of The National Institute of Complex Fluids (INCTFcx) and Nucleo de Apoio a Pesquisa em Fluidos Complexos (NAPFCx). It is organized together with the European Molecular Biology Laboratory - Hamburg (EMBL) and European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO). The main objective of the Course is to teach the young PhD students and postdocs from all areas of biology the methods applicable to study biological macromolecules in solution. We aim at a comprehensive coverage of the field including the major structural and biophysical techniques employed for the characterization of high and low resolution structure and structural transitions, macromolecular complex formation, protein folding and stability, protein-protein and protein-ligand interactions and enzymatic mechanisms. The Course will include lectures on small-angle X-ray and neutron scattering (SAXS/SANS), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), static and dynamic light scattering (SLS/DLS), analytical ultracentrifugation (AUC), differential and isothermal calorimetry (DSC/ITC) and spectroscopic approaches. Bioinformatic tools to analyze protein-protein interactions will be considered, and the joint use of the solution characterization methods with the major non-solution structural techniques including macromolecular crystallography (MX) and electron microscopy (EM) will be covered. Special attention will be paid to interdisciplinary approaches, where the synergistic use of complementary techniques leads to a comprehensive description of macromolecular systems.

The course will be held at the Adma Jafet Auditorium at Institute of Physics of the University of Sao Paulo (IFUSP), Brazil.

A maximum of 50 participants will be selected to attend the course. The registration fee of 50 Euro will be requested from the academic participants covering the event materials, lodging and local meals. Applicants from industry are expected to pay a 1000 Euro fee.

The Course is oriented towards applicants active in structural biology, mostly late Ph.D. students and early post-docs but more senior scientists, depending on circumstances, could also participate. Students working in Brazil or Brazilian students working abroad will be given preference but all applications are welcome.

Application deadline for the Course: October, 15th, 2013.

Crystallography Outreach programme at Hyderabad High Schools (India)

Coordinators: Nandikotkur Padmaja (IASc) and M. S. Rajesh (IISc)

With support and motivation from Professor Gautam R. Desiraju, President of the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr)

The objectives of the Crystallography Outreach programme at Hyderabad were to:

• propagate the importance of crystallography in everyday life to school children and to increase awareness of the science of crystallography;
• teach fundamentals of crystals and crystallography; 
• illustrate the universality of Science and the importance of Science and its application to humanity, referring to crystallography’s contributions to medical science and to other areas of humanity;
• brief about careers opportunities in Science;
• convey information about UNESCO and its work to provide high-quality education to children as a fundamental human right.    

N. Padmaja's lecture on crystallography was greatly enjoyed by the Principal and schoolchildren. Her fluency in English and Telugu was well received!

M. S. Rajesh gave an introductory talk about crystallography and played the video Celebrating Crystallography, in which the children became fully immersed.   

An IYCr2014 and crystallography quiz question paper was a huge hit with the children, many of them achieving excellent scores.  

The Thank you, Dorothy poster prepared to advertise the International Year was quite new to students and there were questions about the life and career of Dorothy Hodgkin. Students who answered the quiz questions received gifts. All the children immensely liked a presentation about crystallization in chocolates, as well as the opportunity to sample real chocolates and candy! The children also appreciated the introductory English Crystallography matters booklet.

Neighbouring schools have asked for similar crystallography programmes.

See the photo gallery

The Opening Ceremony of the International Year of Crystallography took place at the UNESCO House in Place de Fontenoy, Paris.

See the photo gallery 
Read a report by Chris Howard for the Newsletter of the Society of Crystallographers of Australia and New Zealand

The workshop is organized by the steering committee "Année Internationale de la Cristallographie en France - AICr2014" and sponsored by the "Académie des sciences".

Ten invited lectures will illustrate past and current crystallographic works in biology, chemistry, physics and Earth sciences.

Danish start of

International Year of

Crystallography

22. – 23. of January 2014.

H. C. Ørsted Institute, Auditorium 3.

Wednesday 22nd

13.00 Sine Larsen, University of Copenhagen. 

The International Year of Crystallography.

13.30 Mitchell Guss, University of Sydney.

The Braggs 'downunder' and something new about haemoglobin

14.00 Elena Boldyreva, Russian Academy of Sciences: 

IYCr in Novosibirsk.

14.30 Coffee break

15.00 Gerd Schluckebier, Novo Nordisk. 

Applications of crystallography at Novo Nordisk. 

15.30 Marvin Hackert, University of Texas.

IYCr 2014 – Celebrating the Past, Educating for the Future

16.00- 17.00 Discussion with drinks and snacks.

Thursday 23rd

9.00 Henning Friis Poulsen, Technical University of Denmark. 

Multigrain crystallography.

9.30 Mogens Christensen, Aarhus University. 

Diffraction Reveals, Size, Shape and Orientation of Nanomagnets

10.00 Hanna Dabkowska, McMaster University. 

Celebrating the International Year of Crystallography in the Crystal Growers

Community. 

10.30 Coffee break

11.00 Anders Ø. Madsen, University of Copenhagen.

Free energy of crystals: Combining diffraction and quantum calculations.

11.30 Poul Nissen, Aarhus University.

Crystallographic snapshots of membrane proteins.

12.00 Lunch

13.00 Trip to MAX-lab

17.00 Return from MAX-lab

More information and registration at

www.crystallography.dk

2014 has been proclaimed International Year of Crystallography and will be inaugurated during a ceremony at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, on January 20th and 21st, 2014. 

SOLEIL and LLB has pointed out the interest in enhancing this theme before the Users’ Meeting 2014 program, with a morning satellite session SOLEIL - LLB composed of four plenary lectures dedicated to Crystallography, on January 23rd a.m.

Confirmed speakers:
  
Marc de BOISSIEU - Laboratoire de Sciences de l’Ingénierie des Matériaux et Procédés - Grenoble (France)

Christoph MUELLER - EMBL - Heidelberg (Germany) 

Michèle SAUVAGE – Synchrotron SOLEIL (France) 

Bernhard KEIMER - Max Plank Institut (Germany)  

This course will deal with theoretical aspects of physico-chemical knowledge of crystallization methods and crystallography, applied to crystal growth, crystal structural characterization, materials science, industrial crystallization, nanotechnology and pharmaceutical drugs. Practical aspects will include handling database tools for the crystallization and determination of molecular structures. Experience will be gained in the use of specific crystallography and pharmaceutical databases.

This kind of school (the first one in Costa Rica) is very useful for post-graduate students with intensive courses giving an overview of crystallization and polymorphism.

See the photo gallery. 

This meeting, which is to be one of the first official events of the International Year of Crystallography, 2014, as declared by UNESCO and the IUCr, provides a forum in which the greater Southern African scientific community can get exposure to recent developments in powder diffraction, as presented by internationally recognized leaders. And secondly, an opportunity for the African researchers, to present their own work in these areas to their national and international peers.

The scientific legacy of W.H. and W. L. Bragg, both former Directors of the Ri, is both wide ranging and of crucial significance to modern scientific thought. Judith Howard will discuss the concepts of symmetry, which are not exclusive to crystallography, but are embedded deep in its mathematical foundations and essential to the application of Bragg’s Law in the solution of crystal structures.

This Discourse is the 2014 Bragg Lecture.