A dreary, grey, condemned, 1960s low-rise council flat is an unusual place to find one of the most beautiful pieces of crystallographic art in the UK. “Seizure” was constructed by transforming the flat into a watertight tank, into which 70,000 litres of hot copper sulphate solution was poured.  After three weeks of patient waiting, … Read the rest
The Nobel prize for chemistry has been jointly awarded to Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (MRC Cambridge), Thomas Steitz (Yale) and Ada Yonath (Weizmann Institute, Israel) for their work determining the structure of ribosomes. The ribosome is an important component of cells that assembles proteins from amino acids. It is often referred to as “the protein factory”. This … Read the rest
The 25th European Crystallographic Meeting was held in the Harbiye Museum and Cultural Centre in the beautiful city of Istanbul. It was a very eventful week, and contributions to the conference made by Chem. Cryst. include:
N. David Brown, James Haestier, Mustapha Sadki, Amber L. Thompson & David J. Watkin
A Further Improved Structure Matching … Read the rest
The 2009 British Crystallographic Association Spring Meeting was held at the University of Loughborough. Contributions from Chem. Cryst. included:
N. David Brown, James Haestier, Mustapha Sadki, David J. Watkin & Amber L. Thompson
A Further Improved Structure Matching Algorithm (Poster)
James Haestier
Effects of Cell Errors on Derived Parameters (YC Presentation)
James Haestier
Computation of … Read the rest
Every two years, the Young Crystallographers Group of the British Crystallographic Association nominate a speaker to give the prestigious Kathleen Lonsdale Lecture. Traditionally, they invite well respected scientist who has a good rapport with students. This year the Lonsdale Lecturer was David Watkin who is well known within the community, principally as a result of … Read the rest
David Watkin has been elected as Honorary Member of the British Crystallographic Association for his outstanding services to the organisation and crystallography as a whole. The award was made in particular recognition of his role as a teacher, in both the UK and worldwide. The presentation was made at the annual meeting of the BCA … Read the rest
Bob graduated from St Edmund Hall (Oxford) having completed his Part II year doing copper chemistry with Francis Rossotti. He worked for his D. Phil. (still on copper chemistry) with Keith Prout and Francis, and it was during this work that he became interested in crystallography.
For one of the materials he worked on, aquo(maleato)copper(II), … Read the rest
The Annual Meeting of the British Crystallography Association was held in York. Contributions from Chem. Cryst. included:
Anna Collins, Richard I. Cooper, Andrew R. Cowley, David J. Watkin
2-(1-Hydroxy-2-methyl-propyl)-2,5-dihydro-furan-2-carboxylic acid diisopropylamide: A study of a phase transition to a pseudosymmetrical Z′=2 structure (Poster)
James Haestier, Mustapha. Sadki, Amber L. Thompson and David J. Watkin
Cell … Read the rest
I worked with Keith for 40 years. When I came to Oxford in 1967 as a fresh post doc, Keith was already the Lecturer in Chemical Crystallography, running a successful research group alongside those of Tiny Powell and Dorothy Hodgkin. Although he was not my supervisor, I quickly learned that it was he who held … Read the rest
In October, Lynn Nickerson (Science Club Coordinator at Didcot Girls School) arranged for a small group to visit Chemical Crystallography in Oxford University’s new Chemistry Research Laboratory (Figure 1). The group was invited to bring some samples of common crystalline materials with them. The samples brought included cane sugar and citric acid (Figure 2). The … Read the rest
