The Milestones are a series of specially written articles, highlighting the most influential developments towards understanding and using fundamental properties of light and its basic units, photons. Nature Milestones in Crystallography also includes a Collection of relevant articles and an online-only Library of papers and reviews from Nature Publishing Group.

Nature Milestones in Crystallography was produced with support from the worldwide network of neutron and X-ray sources.

It also contains a message from the International Union of Crystallography.