Bookmark and Share

Trends in small moiety crystallography

The Small Molecules Commission of the IUCr and the American Crystallographic Association combined forces at the Atlanta, Georgia ACA Meeting to hold a three-day symposium, June 26-28, 1994, entitled "New Trends in Small Moiety Crystallography". The Symposium Organizing Committee, F. H. Herbstein (Haifa), Chairman; W. L. Duax (Buffalo); G. Ferguson (Guelph); and Yu. T. Struchkov (Moscow) set up a program emphasizing the tremendous qualitative and quantitative changes to be expected in the nature of the next century's structural information because of the anticipated advances in experimental and computational diffraction techniques. The integration and complementation of structural information from diffraction with that obtained in other ways, especially by theoretical and resonance methods, was a no less important factor in the choice of speakers, who were asked to look critically at how their topics have developed and to dare to peer some way into the future. Perhaps the appeal and the strength of the symposium lay in the fact that about half of the topics were not "pure" diffraction, and that about half of those invited do not class themselves as professional diffractionists. Eight of the speakers were from North America, four from the UK, eleven from Europe, and two from Asia; four (B. Iversen, L. Brammer. S. Zamir, A. J. Edwards) were under 35, describing their own researches. The topics covered included direct methods (J. Karle, H. Hauptman, G. M. Sheldrick), synchrotron (M. M. Harding) and neutron (J. L. Finney) sources, low temperatures and their advantages (F. K. Larsen, R. Destro), perfect crystals (M. Hart), chemical theory (J. K. Burdett), arrangements of atoms and molecules in crystals (R. Nesper), comprehensive multidimensional crystallography (A. Janner, P. Coppens), electron microscopy (S. Amelinckx) and surface crystallography (M. A. Van Hove), diffuse scattering (F. Frey), thermal motion (H. Bürgi), and reactions in crystals (J. D. Dunitz), thermodynamic studies (J. A. Ripmeester), the chemical crystallography of high-Tc superconductors (C. N. R. Rao) and single-crystal nuclear magnetic resonance (D. M. Grant) and nuclear quadrupole resonance (A. Weiss).

The Organizing Committee had hoped to achieve a symposium looking outward rather than inward and to strive towards the integration and complementation of structural information from diffraction with that obtainable in other ways. Judging by comments from the audiences, which were sometimes as large as 300, they seem to have succeeded in this, and this is due to the broad and forward-looking responses made by all the speakers to meet the challenges set to them.

The proceedings will be found in a special issue of Acta Crystallographica Section B due to appear towards the middle of 1995, and this can be ordered separately and in advance. The published papers will cover the same ground as the spoken lectures buy will be considerably extended.

F. Herbstein, Israel

Speakers, chairpersons and organizers of the symposium on Small Moiety Crystallography. Y. Struchkov, I. Karle, D. Zhao, J. Trotter, L. Brammer, G. Ferguson, S. Zamir, R. Destro, B. Iversen, A. Janner, P. Coppens, J. Karle, D. Grant, F. Herbstein, F. Frey, H. Hauptman, J. Burdett, M. Hart, G. Sheldrick, A. Edwards, F. Larsen, M. Harding, D. Langs and H.-B. Bürgi. (Photo WLD.)