Crystallography News British Crystallographic Association
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Crystallography News British Crystallographic Association Issue No. 123 December 2012 ISSN 1467-2790 European Meeting 27 ACA Meeting Report p6 Margaret Etter Awards p10 ECM27 Reports p11 Crystallography in the Garden p16 ECM 28 Invitation p22 EXPERIENCE TRUE BRILLIANCE Confidence means a revolutionary high-brilliance X-ray system that meets the needs of the most challenging crystallography projects. Agilent’s new GV1000 X-ray diffractometer represents a major leap forward in the generation of X-rays for demanding structural biology applications. The GV1000 combines novel approaches in all core source components, with innovative gradient vacuum technology affording an extremely compact, quiet and high-brilliance X-ray source. See macromolecular structures in a whole new light with the brilliant new Agilent GV1000 X-ray diffractometer. Learn more at www.agilent.com/lifesciences/GV1000. Scan the QR code with your smartphone for more information about GV1000 © Agilent Technologies, Inc. 2012 The DualSource RAPID II The most f lexible diff ractometer in the world • Small molecule crystal structures • Powder diff raction • Protein crystal structures • Absolute determination of chiral compounds • Diff use scattering • Supermolecular structures • Twinned and disordered crystals www.Rigaku.com/dsr2 Rigaku Corporation and its Global Subsidiaries website: www.Rigaku.com | email: [email protected] Crystallography News December 2012 Contents From the Editor. 2 BCA Council 2012. 3 From the President. 4 BCA Administrative Office, Helen Leese Puzzle Corner. 5 First Floor Hornbeam House American Crystallographic Association Hornbeam Business Park Annual Meeting. 6 Harrogate HG2 8QT Tel: +44 (0)1423 855 990 Fax: +44 (0)1423 855 999 Margaret Etter Student Lecture Awards. 10 e-mail: [email protected] ECM Bergen 2012. 11 CRYSTALLOGRAPHY NEWS is published quarterly (March, June, September and BCA IG May Meeting. 13 December) by the British Crystallographic Association, and printed by Bowmans, Leeds. Text should preferably be sent electronically as MSword documents SWSBC (South West Structural Biology Consortium) 15 (any version - .doc, .rtf or .txt files) or else on a PC disk. Diagrams and figures are most welcome, but please send them On the Trail of Crystallography in the Garden!. 16 separately from text as .jpg, .gif, .tif, or .bmp files. Items may include technical articles, news about people (e.g. awards, Uttoxeter Jubilee Diamond. 19 honours, retirements etc.), reports on past meetings of interest to crystallographers, notices of future meetings, historical reminiscences, letters to the editor, book, Crystal Clear Reflections: a Londoner Physicist hardware or software reviews. Please in Yorkshire, 1947-51. 20 ensure that items for inclusion in the March 2013 issue are sent to the Editor to arrive before 25 January 2013. Invitation to ECM28. 22 Carl Schwalbe 15 St Augustine Drive Droitwich Obituaries. 24 Worcs WR9 8QR Tel: 01905 775257 e-mail: [email protected] Meetings of Interest. 27 CAF Charities Aid Foundation. 29 The British Crystallographic Association is a Registered Charity (#284718) As required by the DATA PROTECTION ACT, the BCA is notifying members that we store your contact information on a computer database to simplify our administration. These details are not divulged to any others This month’s cover: without your permission. You may inspect your entry during the Annual Meeting, or otherwise by application to the BCA Scenes from Administrative Office. We will be happy to amend entries at any time. Bergen, Norway, and ECM27 Printed by Bowmans Westland Square, Westland Road, Leeds, LS11 5SS Tel: 0113 272 0088 Web: www.bowmans77.co.uk Crystallography News December 2012 1 From the Editor IT has been a wonderful of the FRS was crowned with success already in 1899. By summer for crystallographic 1929 he had published data on over 90 salts in over 50 meetings. Running the gamut papers. While this year we rightly celebrate the momentous from B to B, the two big ones discovery of X-ray diffraction, Tutton showed that well into were held in cities that offered the 20th century it was still possible to obtain valuable fine culture as well as great information about crystals from goniometric and optical seafood, set in areas of measurements. beautiful scenery. Both Boston, I also thank Derry for helping the gifted instrument designer the venue for the American Dennis S Beard with the preparation of an autobiographical Crystallographic Association, article. As well as designing instrumentation for high-end and Bergen, the site of the research applications, Dennis has been active in the European Crystallographic Meeting, were not cheap; production of apparatus that is simple, safe and cheap but then we crystallographers are worth it, aren’t we? enough to be useful in schools for demonstrating topics Reports on both meetings appear in this issue. We can such as X-rays. also anticipate with great pleasure the sophistication and natural beauty of the venues for next year’s This article and the sequence of the Laue and Bragg meetings: Honolulu for the ACA and Warwick University anniversaries and the International Year of Crystallography for the ECM. Neither should we lose sight of the smaller, naturally prompt thinking about our public outreach more tightly focused meetings. In this issue we have activities. I am pleased that we have an article by Gwenda reports on the May meeting of our Industrial Group and Kyd describing a joint initiative undertaken by CCDC and the conference of the South West Structural Biology the Cambridge University Botanic Garden. Medicinal plants Consortium. While it goes to press, the meeting of the in the garden are associated with the crystal structures of Physical Crystallography Group and the joint meeting of the medicinally useful compounds that they contain. We the Chemical and Industrial Groups will take place. also show the result of a bright idea by Graeme Jones of Readers should still be in time to attend the BSG Winter Keele University. To celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Meeting: 'From Genome to Proteome', MRC Cambridge, he organised teams of willing helpers, many from local Tuesday 11 December 2012. schools, to construct and display in the centre of Uttoxeter a model of a diamond crystal of record-breaking size. Notices in this issue demonstrate that next year will be an excellent one for crystallographic education, beginning I continue with another request from Kevin Lotery, who is with the very popular and highly effective Durham School an art historian seeking crystallographic images from the from 6 to 14 April 2013. Our Durham colleagues are also 1950s produced by scientists such as J W Jeffery, organising the programme for “The Future of Dynamic Kathleen Lonsdale, C H Carlisle, L Heller, I M Dawson Structural Science”, which will take place in Erice from 30 and V Vand. He is looking for high-resolution images or May to 8 June. Finally I mention the long and comprehensive original negatives/prints of images from around this period Zurich School to be run by our Swiss friends from the 9 to by these or other researchers. He is based in London and 22 of June. can be reached via the following information: Kevin Lotery, Ph.D. Candidate, History of Art and Architecture, Harvard I am grateful to Derry Jones for bringing to my attention a University, tel. +44(0) 75 2823 8040 (UK). While we report written by W H Brock in the Newsletter of the RSC contemplate the beauty of many crystallographic images Historical Group about the life of Alfred Tutton (1864-1938). and think about outreach activities, we should recall the It can be found at http://www.chem.qmul.ac.uk/rschg/ work of Helen Megaw. With a distinguished record in Newsletter/NL2012summer.pdf . Tutton already left school science and a post of Assistant Director of Research at the at 14 but carried on attending evening classes to improve Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, she turned her attention himself. Winning a scholarship to the Royal College of to the possibility of incorporating crystallographic patterns Science in South Kensington, he compiled such an into commercial designs. As chief scientific consultant to the outstanding record that he was made a demonstrator. In Festival Pattern Group, she inspired the exhibition at the 1895 he obtained a permanent job as Her Majesty’s 1951 Festival of Britain of a wide variety of manufactured Inspector for Technical Schools, which kept him very busy. products featuring crystal structure designs. In 2008 the Notwithstanding this occupation, he was “obsessively Wellcome Trust put on a retrospective exhibition, “From determined to gain an FRS even if it meant working in his Atoms to Patterns”, with an associated book. In 2008 spare time day and night”, in the words of his friend articles and reviews appeared in Crystallography News in Frederick William Westaway. (Parenthetically, if the FRS’s the March (p 26), June (p 26) and December (p 27) issues, I know were obsessive about anything, it was their research; and the website for this exhibition is still accessible at and Fellowship of the Royal Society “just happened”.) http://www.wellcomecollection.org/whats- Tutton built a private laboratory in each house where he on/exhibitions/from-atoms-to-patterns.aspx . lived, in which he undertook very precise measurements of dimensions and interfacial angles in crystals made from It just remains for me to wish all our readers a happy holiday closely related series of elements. He initially studied season. On an exam one of my students once wrote about sulphates and selenates of K, Rb, Cs, NH4 and Th, and “Brag’s Law”. As we enter the Year of the Braggs I hope it will then their double salts with Mn, Cu and Cd (usually known bring all of us solid accomplishments that we can brag about. as Tutton’s salts). He concluded that crystal properties varied regularly with atomic number.