Seattle Through Young Eyes

The following are excerpts from reports of students who received travel support from the Australian Crystallographic Association to attend the IUCr XVII Congress and General Assembly.

The presentation in which P. Barnes (Birkbeck College, London) illustrated not only the importance but the necessity of using complementary techniques in the study of cement and ceramic chemistry was excellent. The lecture included a video journey, à la Star Trek, down the pore of a zeolite. Also memorable was the session in which eight Nobel Prize winners (Brockhouse, Deisenhofer, Hauptman, Karle, Kendrew, Lipscomb, Michel and Shull) answered questions ranging from `Do you have any advice for young scientists?' and `Did you expect to win the Nobel Prize?' to `If you had the chance again, would you still go into science?' I attended sessions on `Surface, Interfaces and Thin Films' and `Fibre Diffraction', areas of which I previously knew little. Lectures on negative thermal expansion, high pressure studies and giant magnetoresistance also proved fascinating. The conference gave me the chance to meet a large number of people, to exchange ideas, put some faces to well known names and to explore topics which I perhaps would not have encountered otherwise.

It was great being able to mingle with some absolute legends. Of particular interest were A. Beevers and the inventor of the 4-circle diffractometer, T. Furnas.