Crystals —familiar to all in gemstones, glittering snowflakes or grains of salt— are everywhere in nature. Throughout history, people have been fascinated by their beauty and mystery. Two thousand years ago, the process of crystallizing sugar and salt was already known to the ancient Indian and Chinese civilizations. Since then, the study of crystals’ inner structure and properties has known steady progress, giving us our deepest insights into the arrangement of atoms in the solid state and leading to advancements the sciences of solid-state physics, chemistry, biology, medicine and even mathematics, by considering the symmetries behind crystalline and quasicrystalline patterns.

In the early 20th century, it was discovered that X-rays could be used to ‘see’ the structure of matter in a non-intrusive manner, thus beginning the dawn of modern crystallography —the science that examines the arrangement of atoms in solids. X-ray crystallography has allowed us to study the chemical bonds which draw one atom to another. Crystallographers now apply this knowledge to modify a structure and thus change its properties and behavior. Since this discovery, crystallography has become the very core of structural science, revealing the structure of DNA, allowing us to understand and fabricate computer memories, showing us how proteins are created in cells and helping scientists to design powerful new materials and drugs. Thus crystallography has many applications. It permeates our daily lives and forms the backbone of industries which are increasingly reliant on knowledge generation to develop new products, in widely diverse fields that include agro-food, aeronautics, automobiles, cosmetics and computers as well as the electro-mechanical, pharmaceutical and mining industries.