Symmetry in Russia

Professors T. Hahn and H. Wondratschek conducted a school on Symmetry As A Basis For Structure Analysis in St Petersburg, Russia in August 1995 under the auspices of the IUCr Commission on Teaching and the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. Young crystallographers from Russia and the Ukraine gained experience using the International Tables for Crystallography (Vol. 1). Each pupil received a book of lectures and a brief teaching edition of the International Tables.

Russian specialists presented lectures on modern symmetry: Crystallography of ferroics (L. A. Shuvalov), Program "Wyckoff" instead of the International Tables (R. V. Galiulin), interatomic interactions and symmetry aspects of quasicrystals (L. A. Aslanov), a module approach to color symmetry (A. L. Tales), and orientational ordering of fullerene (V. S. Shekhtman).

The school, organized by the Department of Crystallography of St Petersburg U., was conducted in buildings located on the embankment of the Neva river near the Hermitage, Peter and Paul fortress, the Admiralry, and bridges of the old part of the city.

The social program included visits to the Mendeleev museum, the Mineralogical museum (founded 210 years ago) and the Mining Institute where E. S. Fedorov derived the 230 space groups in 1890. S. K. Filatov, O. V. Krank-Kamenetskaya, and T. N. Kamenetskaya were local organizers and I. A. Kasatkin, E. Yu. Avdontseva. and T. I. Ivanova were tutors. The IUCr, the Russian FFI, and Russian Committee on higher education were sponsors of the school.