The Phase Problem of X‐Ray Crystallography

NOV 01, 1989

For almost 40 years physicists thought it impossible, even in principle, to determine complex crystal structures directly from the intensities of diffracted x rays.

DOI: 10.1063/1.881207

Herbert A. Hauptman

With the invention some 200 years ago of the goniometer, an instrument for measuring the angles between the faces of a crystal, the science of crystallography was born. The goniometer made possible the discovery of the fundamental laws of descriptive crystallography: that the angles between the facial planes are determined by the chemical composition of the crystal and that the relative orientations of the facial planes follow a simple rule, the law of rational positions.

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More about the authors

Herbert A. Hauptman, Medical Foundation of Buffalo, Buffalo, New York.