We are sad to report the death of Jack Dunitz, Professor Emeritus at ETH-​Zürich, Switzerland, at the age of 98. Professor Dunitz was widely valued as an insightful scientist, an inspirational teacher and a witty raconteur, who shaped the development of modern crystallography over more than 70 years.

The twelfth Ewald Prize has been awarded to Dr Olga Kennard (Cambridge, UK) for her invaluable pioneering contribution to the development of crystallographic databases, in particular the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD), which as she early foresaw, has led "… to the discovery of new knowledge which transcends the results of individual experiment".

I was born in Budapest, Hungary, and lived there until August 1939, when we moved to England, just two weeks before the outbreak of the war. Although I spoke very little English, I was accepted at the Hove County Grammar School, and unexpectedly placed straight into the fifth form to matriculate the same year.