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IUCr 1993 Triennial Report - Commission on Synchrotron Radiation

The field of synchrotron radiation and its applications in crystallography in the last three years has seen further dramatic growth. This is due, of course, to the immense utility of these intense, polychromatic and collimated X-ray sources.

At the Bordeaux Congress, synchrotron radiation (SR) figured prominently and likewise in the plans for the Beijing Congress. Additionally at Beijing there is to be a Satellite Meeting on Applications of Synchrotron Radiation in Crystallography. The Commission has been actively involved in planning these conferences. Additionally, there have been Satellite Meetings of both ECM-13, held on Synchrotron Radiation in Crystallography in 1991 in Trieste, and of the Synchrotron Radiation Instrumentation (SRI) World Congress, in Manchester also in 1991. Most recently, a Workshop has been organized and held in Rome in May 1993 on CCD detectors in macromolecular crystallography to help the growth of the detector development match that of source development.

To meet the need to set standards in the field and allow comparisons between sources, global instrumentation surveys have been commissioned. The first of these, on macromolecular crystallography, was published in Synchrotron Radiation News in 1992. Other surveys are in preparation for EXAFS, materials science diffraction and fibre diffraction.

A proposal for a Journal of Synchrotron Radiation has been made to the IUCr. The Commission has had a major input to the deliberations on this. Open discussions were held at a variety of conferences, both national and international, in Europe, the USA and Japan. Representative organizations and the Directors of Synchrotron Radiation Laboratories have also been contacted.

Various representative organizations have grown up in recent years. These include BioSync in the USA, the European Synchrotron Radiation Society and the Japanese Synchrotron Radiation Society. Contact has been maintained with each. The Commission has also provided detailed technical input to an important review/policy document prepared by BioSync planning the provision and growth of SR instruments and facilities for biological synchrotron-radiation research in the USA in the next decade.

1992 has seen the commissioning of the first of the next generation of high-brilliance high-energy synchrotron-radiation sources, namely the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble. This is indeed a milestone for the field of synchrotron radiation.

10 May 1993                                J. R. HELLIWELL, Chairman

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