As lots of you may already know this year is the 100th anniversary of Max Laue’s discovery of the diffraction of X-rays on crystals! German chemist Laue published a paper on his findings in 1912 and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1914. According to his Nobel Lecture (as detailed on the Nobel Prize website), the discovery originated when he was discussing problems related to the passage of waves of light through a periodic, crystalline arrangement of particles. The idea then came to him that the much shorter electromagnetic rays, which X-rays were supposed to be, would cause in such a medium some kind of diffraction or interference phenomena and that a crystal would provide such a medium. More information about Laue and his intriguing story can be found on the Nobel website.
Of course crystallography has come a long way since then as we see in CrystEngComm every day. For example, many groups are now even looking at x-ray diffraction of crystals under pressure as featured in our recent themed issue.
I’m sure there are many events happening around the world to commemorate this discovery – one which has already come to my notice is at the 20th Annual Meeting of the German Crystallographic Society which will be held at the University of Munich, 12-15 March, 2012. In a dedicated ‘Laue Day’ they plan to analyze historical and future perspectives of diffraction methods.
If you are planning to hold an event to highlight the anniversary why not let us know by posting a comment on this blog post below……
