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[W. L. Duax]

Crystallography across the sciences

This issue of the Newsletter contains reports from the scientific sessions at the XVIII IUCr Congress in Glasgow, summaries of selected articles from recent issues of journals published by the IUCr, reports from national and international symposia and workshops sponsored by the IUCr in all parts of the world, information on resources for crystallography and news about and awards received by crystallographers.

The remarkable scope of applications of crystallography is reflected throughout the Newsletter and in the superb anthology “Crystallography Across the Sciences” the publication with which the IUCr celebrated its 50th anniversary. The cover illustrations of this issue of the Newsletter are taken from the book.

“Crystallography across the Sciences” is a rich collection of state of the art reports on advances and applications of crystallography in its myriad forms. The volume includes chapters by the ten plenary lecturers at the IUCr 50th anniversary sessions held in the US, Europe, and Asia in 1998 and a dozen other chapters by authorities in special areas of crystallography, ranging from small angle scattering and powder diffraction, to drug design and macromolecular structure. The book provides a crash course in where crystallography stands near the end of its first century. Every crystallographer, materials scientist, and structural biologist should have a copy of this book in their personal library. It also makes an excellent gift if you are invited to lecture on crystallography and want to present your host with a valuable reminder of your visit. Copies are available at IUCr headquarters in Chester.

Due to space limitation, only a few of the reports from the IUCr Congress are published in this issue. More will follow in future issues. All the reports that were filed (25) can be found on the IUCr website, together with photographs of the speakers in 90% of the sessions.

The format for presentation of highlights of recent IUCr publications has been revised in this issue of the Newsletter in order to identify their source clearly and provide full reference of the articles selected by the Editors for discussion.

This issue contains no Letters to the Editor. Either we are making fewer errors or our gentle readers have decided it’s hopeless to try to correct us. This Newsletter is a forum for open communication among all crystallographers. Please let us hear from you. In particular, we would like to hear the opinion of the readers concerning the inclusion of highlights from Acta Cryst journals, reports of IUCr Commissions and essays on the current focus and future trends in crystallography.