Pre-1962

This extract from 50 Years of X-ray Diffraction, edited by P. P. Ewald and published in 1962, recounts the early development of crystallography in this region.

Argentina

Probably the first Argentine scientist to get in contact with an X-ray diffraction laboratory was Dr. Horacio Damianovich. He travelled to Paris in 1929 taking with him some platinum electrodes that had been working for many hours in helium-filled discharge tubes. Prof. Trillat took some Debye-Scherrer patterns, but the results regarding a possible Pt-He interaction were not conclusive (Damianovich and Trillat, 1929).

In 1933 Prof. E. E. Galloni of the Natural Sciences Faculty in Buenos Aires worked for five months with a fellowship grant with Prof. J. Palacios in Madrid (space group of gypsum), but it was not until 1938 that a powder camera could be installed in the Institute of Experimental Medicine (Director Dr. A. H. Roffo) and the structure of platinum oxide studied (Galloni and Roffo, 1941).

In 1941 the Science Faculty of the University in Buenos Aires purchased a General Electric diffraction unit including powder and rotating crystal cameras. Work on metallic oxides and mineral identification was done with this unit up to 1952, and a similar unit purchased at about the same time for the Physics Institute of the University of La Plata was in use there.

The Argentine Atomic Energy Cornmission in Buenos Aires uses powder and Laue methods in its metallurgical Department and electron as well as X-ray diffraction in its diffraction laboratory which is directed by E. E. Galloni. This Commission has recently acquired Weissenberg, small-angle, and microcameras from the Navy Medical Institution.

Several more installations can be found at the Solid State Physics Institute at San Carlos de Bariloche (founded in 1954) and in academic physics and geology departments.

A National Committee of Crystallography was founded in 1959. A rapid increase in research is to be expected thanks to scholarships which enable students to study in well-known laboratories, and to visiting lecturers. The first meeting of the Ibero-american Association was held in Corboda Province in 1960; twenty papers were read on that occasion.

First published for the International Union of Crystallography 1962 by N.V.A. Oosthoek's Uitgeversmaatschappij, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Digitised 1999 for the IUCr XVIII Congress, Glasgow, Scotland
© 1962, 1999 International Union of Crystallography