International Tables for Crystallography

Volume A: Space-group symmetry

Sample pages for Volume A (PDF format)

Reduced-rate copies are for personal use only and are not to be placed at the disposal of any library.

Volume A (first published in 1983) treats crystallographic symmetry in direct or physical space. Its main features are extensive tabulations and illustrations of the 17 plane groups, the 230 space groups and the 32 crystallographic point groups.

The first five parts of the volume contain introductory material: lists of symbols and terms; a guide to the use of the space-group tables; the determination of space groups; synoptic tables of space-group symbols; and unit-cell (coordinate) transformations. These are followed by the plane-group and space-group tables (Parts 6 and 7). For each group type, the following information is presented on two pages:

• headline with the relevant group symbols;
• diagrams of the symmetry elements and of the general position;
• specification of the origin and the asymmetric unit;
• list of symmetry operations;
• generators;
• general and special positions with multiplicities, site symmetries, coordinates and reflection conditions;
• symmetries of special projections;
• extensive subgroup and supergroup data.

The rest of the volume is at a much higher theoretical level than Parts 1 to 5; it has many features of an advanced textbook of crystallography. Parts 8 to 15 deal with the following aspects of symmetry theory: the mathematical approach to space groups; crystal lattices; point groups and crystal classes; symbols for symmetry operations; symbols for space groups; isomorphic subgroups of space groups; lattice complexes; and normalizers of space groups.

Volume A is designed not only for professional crystallographers, but also for chemists, physicists, mineralogists, biologists and material scientists who employ crystallographic methods and who are concerned with the structure and the properties of crystalline materials.

The fifth edition of Volume A has been reviewed by P. Paufler [Acta Cryst. (2004). A60, 641-642]. The first edition was reviewed by K. M. Stadnicka, B. J. Oleksyn and K. Z. Sokalski [Acta Cryst. (1987). A43, 156-159].

Copies may be ordered directly from Springer or from any bookseller.

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