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

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.