50 Years Ago

Fifty Years of X-ray Diffraction (edited by P. P. Ewald) — The book ... provides an extremely refreshing commentary on varieties of organization of scientific research, seen through the eyes of the very young ... Wyart coming to Mauguin's laboratory, where there were only two elderly professors, with two elderly servants who kept the place clean and were rather worried about the mess he made, preparing crystals. There is young Schubnikov, trying to buy a lathe to cut crystal sections in Sverdlovsk in 1920 — and, since its price doubled in a few days, spending a million roubles of his own money to get it. There is young Mosley, who could not stop an experiment once he had started it and knew where to get a meal in Manchester at 3 o'clock in the morning ... Wars and revolutions necessarily enter into the memories recorded here, though there are only casual references to the adventurous lives led by many crystallographers — to Carl Hermann, for example, working out the crystal structures of the urea adducts in prison ... Perhaps most moving is the account of the reunion that took place after the Second World War when Laue himself came to London and met, after a long separation, crystallographers from all over the world. One has, throughout these pages, a very strong impression of being among a very united group of friends — united, as Bijvoet says, by a delight in crystals.

From Nature 25 January 1964

100 Years Ago

The late Capt. Scott's original journals written during his expedition to the south pole, have been placed on view in the manuscript department of the British Museum.

From Nature 22 January 1914