Editorial

This issue is dedicated to Dorothy Hodgkin and Linus Pauling who exemplify the spirit of the IUCr. Linus was 93 on February 28 and Dorothy will be 84 on May 12. The brief accounts of their lives contained in this issue were based upon more detailed biographies of Pauling and Hodgkin written by R. J. Paradowski and N. W. Hunter respectively, published in Nobel Laureates in Chemistry 1901-1992, edited by L. K. James and published by the American Chemical Society and the Chemical Heritage Foundation. Birthday messages can be dispatched to:

Dorothy C. Hodgkin
Crab Mill
Ilmington
Shipston on Stow
Warwickshire, UK

Linus Pauling
Linus Pauling Inst. of Science and Medicine
440 Page Mill Road
Palo Alto, CA 94306

No laundry lists please

This newsletter depends entirely upon contributions from you. Please contribute a report of a recent meeting, a description of a resource that you feel would benefit other crystallographers, details of a project being conducted by a Commission of the IUCr, news about a crystallographer, or a letter addressing questions of financial support for science, the education of future crystallographers, the need for interdisciplinary research, future directions for the field, or whatever else is on your mind.

Participants as well as organizers of meetings with crystallographic context are invited to send reports of the highlights of those meetings. Reports will be most valuable if they are focused, lively and entertaining. In meeting announcements it is appropriate to list topics and titles of invited presentations, but a meeting report should not be a repetition of that laundry list. A report should highlight exciting new findings. If you cannot say anything more after the meeting than before something is wrong. Some people are reluctant to express their opinion about what they found most useful or exciting about a meeting for fear of offending a highly respected plenary lecturer who gave the painfully familiar guided tour of his or her scientific life and times. Trust your instincts and express your opinion. In addition to the report, please send pictures if at all possible or suggest whom we might contact in order to get pictures. Three types of pictures are most desirable.

One or two illustrations of the scientific content: New results, new instruments, an advance in technique or a basic concept pertinent to the meeting that may not be fully appreciated by crystallographers outside the particular field (i.e., Can somebody illustrate Compton Scattering for me?).

Pictures of the participants: Either in group shots (boring) or a candid or quasi candid (staged) shot of a small group engaged in animated discussion or serious drinking. All photos including group shots should include identification of those pictured. Even if the complete list of those in a group shot cannot be included in a photo caption, it would be very useful to have those identifications in the newsletter archives.

A photo characteristic of the country or site of the meeting: This might be a natural or architectural wonder. If people and places can be effectively combined so much the better. If the meeting has a logo, a sharp clear copy would be appreciated. This is especially useful for meetings that are part of a series. Please include a copy of the list of attendees of the meeting so that we can consider adding them to the Newsletter circulation list.

Some of the meeting reports in this issue are not current due to late submission, page limitations, and too few hours in the editor's day. All the material that has been submitted in the past year is deeply appreciated. Unfortunately, page limitations make it necessary to edit some of the materials extensively. I hope that such editing does not dampen the enthusiasm of contributors. So far no one has brought suit against me.

Mad about MAD

David Harker always decried the use of acronyms. He would certainly be amused and confused if confronted by the use of MAD to define both Munich Area Detectors and multiple-wavelength anomalous dispersion in the same article on page 27 of this issue.

Buerger Award

As the Newsletter goes to press, we learned that the Buerger Award for contributions of exceptional distinction to crystallography will be presented to IUCr President, Philip Coppens at the American Crystallographic Association meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, June 25-30.

Mystery illustrations

Alajos Kalman points out that the temple at Segesta pictured on page 28 of Volume 1, No. 4 is not Roman, but Greek.

Since the issues of the journal containing the first three contest pictures are now on library shelves, those contests are closed.

Vol. 1, No. 2: 'Crystal Engineering and Structural Investigations of 2-amino-5-nitropyridinium Salt:' (Pecaut, LeFur, and Masse) Winners: J. Stanko, J. S. Rutherford, H. B. Slot

Vol. 1, No. 3: 'The Determination of Rigid-Unit Modes as Potential Soft Modes for Displacive Phase Transitions in Framework Crystal Structures' (Giddy, Dove, Pawley, and Heine) Winners: C. Andre, J. D. Schagen

Vol. 1, No. 4: 'On the Application of One-Wavelength Anomalous Scattering. IV. The Absolute Configuration of the Anomalous Scatterers' (Woolfson and Jia-Xing) Winner: C. Andre.

Extend a hand

Please consider making a donation to the ACA/USNCCr fund to assist crystallographers in the Former Soviet Union so that a matching fund challenge can be met. See page 23.