Summer School for Crystallography

Thirty-two students attended the Summer School held on the U. of Pittsburgh campus July 28-Aug. 8. Backgrounds of the students were very diverse. Some had solved a dozen or more structures while others were comparative novices. One third of the students work or plan to work in macromolecular structure determination. The teachers consisted of four faculty and three tutors and experts from four diffractometer-vending companies. In the mornings, lectures emphasized the basics of crystallography and structure determination while the rest of the day was given to hands-on use of diffractometers and computers. In all, 24 data sets for small molecule structures were collected and 20 structures were solved and refined. Detailed evaluations submitted by most of the participants showed that the School was an outstanding success. There were strong recommendations to repeat the school in 1993.