Crystal Engineering

Edited by:
  • Mike Zaworotko
Pergamon-Elsevier. 4/yr. euro 166.54, $186

Reductionism has been very successful when applied in a descending order of scale and complexity, the normal direction for reducing biology to chemistry, solid-state physics and, finally, elementary-particle physics. Unfortunately, as remarked in 1972 by physics nobellist Philip Anderson, “the ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe … Instead, at each level of complexity, entirely new properties appear.” This makes it next to impossible to deduce the complexity and novelty that can emerge through knowing the composition of many elementary entities.

Anderson's views are regularly verified in the new cross-disciplinary field of crystal engineering. The related journal is aimed at developing protocols for predicting and controlling the structure and function of molecular crystalline materials. Although the basic laws governing molecular interactions at the sub-microscopic level are essentially known, the preferred forms of molecular aggregation at the upper level of complexity (the macroscopic crystal) remain substantially unpredictable.

This may justify the journal's editorial policy, which focuses on the synthesis and determination of the structure of molecular crystals, co-crystals and clathrates that have specific and potentially useful internal patterns. There is less emphasis on theoretical interpretation or ab initio crystal structure prediction. The journal therefore adds to the harvest of experimental data from which the final rules of crystal composition will, hopefully, emerge.

Crystal Engineering has other merits, in particular a pleasing typographic form and a truly outstanding list of editorial members. Its success will depend on its ability to complement other well-established crystallographic journals by becoming a reference for general problems of crystal design, such as the systematics of molecular interactions, the topochemical features of crystals that give them their specific physical properties, and the rationalization of the often cryptic supramolecular nomenclature.

→http://www.crystal-engineering.net