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.

Italy

In spite of the great tradition in mineralogy and crystallography which in Italy goes back to the 17th century, the first X-ray work came from the chemical institute of the Polytechnic in Milan and was directed to problems of analytical and physical chemistry. A very viable school, which still persists, was created here in 1924 by G. Bruni, G. R. Levi and G. Natta with many co-workers. Their investigation of oxides, hydroxides, fluorides, carbonates, etc. was based on powder diagrams, the technique of which G. R. Levi had been studying with Debye and Scherrer in ZÜrich. In the course of time, single-crystal methods were adopted, and now the use of Weissenberg and precession cameras, optical and machine summation leads to single-crystal work of high quality and chemical significance.

Among the mineralogists, E. Onorato was the first to enter the field (1927) by his determination of the space group of gypsum from Laue diagrams during his studies with Rinne-Schiebold in Leipzig. In the same laboratory V. Montoro received his training; he later devoted most of his work to analyses of metallurgical interest.

The lack of equipment which was largely responsible for the relatively small amount of work coming from Italy in the period between the wars was overcome in the last decade; the number of well equipped laboratories has doubled and a large group of young and well trained X-ray crystallographers is now at work in academic, industrial and governmental laboratories on chemical as well as physical and mineralogical problems. Fluorescence analysis and electron diffraction are also being used.

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