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.

Norway
 

In Norway, X-ray crystallographic investigations were initiated by Professor L. Vegard at the Institute of Physics of the University of Oslo. Vegard's first paper on this subject appeared in 1915, and in the following years he described the crystal structures of several metallic elements, oxides such as rutile and anatase, ammonium halides, zircon, nitrogen and carbon monoxide; he also proposed the well-known Vegard's Law for the atomic distances in solid solutions.

V. M. Goldschmidt's contributions in the twenties and thirties are well known, and are noted elsewhere in this volume.* F. W. H. Zachariasen's work will not be listed here, although his first X-ray analyses were carried out in Norway.

* Unfortunately not, as planned, in an In Memoriam in Part V (Editor).

About 1925 Professor O. Hassel began using X-ray crystallographic methods at the Institute of Chemistry of the University of Oslo, and this has since been the centre for X-ray structure research in Norway. Hassel's first work was connected with the determination of the structures of graphite, boron nitride and several other inorganic compounds. One of his main interests has been the structure of organic ring compounds, particularly cyclohexane and its derivatives. Of the several problems of special interest which he has investigated in recent years are addition structures (donor-acceptor systems), mainly of halogens and halogen compounds.

One of Hassel's pupils, S. Furberg, has recently carried out a series of investigations on biologically important substances.

In ca. 1935, in cooperation with Hassel, and later independently, Chr. Finbak started investigations on the X-ray diffraction of rotating groups. As their diffraction patterns possess the same character as patterns from liquids and amorphous materials, it was natural that Finbak turned to studies of liquids. In this field, he solved a number of methodical problems. Since his death in 1954, this work has been continued by N. Norman among others. At the Central Institute for Industrial Research in Oslo, Norman has investigated fibres and high polymers, for example cellulose.

At the end of the thirties, Hassel and Finbak took up electron diffraction as a useful tool for the investigation of the structures of molecules of gases. They were joined by H. Viervoll and O. Bastiansen who developed the method to one of very high accuracy. Bastiansen has also started work on crystal diffraction at the Norwegian Institute of Technology in Trondheim. At the same Institute, H. Sørum has investigated certain minerals. After Goldschmidt, mineral structures have been further studied at the Institute of Mineralogy of the University of Oslo by T. Barth, I. Oftedal and H. Neumann. At the Institute of Chemistry, H. Haraldsen, and later F. Grønvold, studied the chalkogenides of the transition elements, and at the same Institute O. Foss started the investigation of inorganic sulphur compounds, which he then continued at the University of Bergen.

Dutch-Norwegian cooperation at the nuclear reactor at Kjeller has introduced neutron diffraction into Norway as a tool for the study of crystal structures. Organic structure problems, related to Hassel's work, have been started here; J. Goedkoop and T. Riste have also begun to examine magnetic structures.

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