"AKIRA", AN EXPERT SYSTEM TO PREDICT CRYSTAL STRUCTURES. Masahiko Hosoya, Hiroya Chinen and Makoto Nakamoto, Department of Physics, University of the Ryukyus, Japan

An AI (Artificial Intelligence) program is presented to predict crystal structures from the constituent atoms with no quantum mechanical calculation but the help of empirical laws. The program "AKIRA" made on an expert shell now only adopts a very few rules such as Hume-Rothery's one, preference of close-packed structures, Grymm-Sommerfeld's law, but gives correct answers to a fairly large fraction of the known crystals of type AB. The possibility of its expansion brightens its future practical usefulness just as its name "AKIRA" means brilliance like stars or crystals.