Crystallography

In Our Time

BBC

History

4.6 • 9.9K Ratings

🗓️ 28 November 2012

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the history of crystallography, the study of crystals and their structure. The discovery in the early 20th century that X-rays could be diffracted by a crystal revolutionised our knowledge of materials. This crystal technology has touched most people's lives, thanks to the vital role it plays in diverse scientific disciplines - from physics and chemistry, to molecular biology and mineralogy. To date, 28 Nobel Prizes have been awarded to scientists working with X-ray crystallography, an indication of its crucial importance.

The history of crystallography began with the work of Johannes Kepler in the 17th century, but perhaps the most crucial leap in understanding came with the work of the father-and-son team the Braggs in 1912. They built on the work of the German physicist Max von Laue who had proved that X-rays are a form of light waves and that it was possible to scatter these rays using a crystal. The Braggs undertook seminal experiments which transformed our perception of crystals and their atomic arrangements, and led to some of the most significant scientific findings of the last century - such as revealing the structure of DNA.

With:

Judith Howard Director of the Biophysical Sciences Institute and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Durham

Chris Hammond Life Fellow in Material Science at the University of Leeds

Mike Glazer Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford and Visiting Professor of Physics at the University of Warwick

Producer: Natalia Fernandez.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
0:04.7	My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.
0:08.5	As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.
0:18.0	What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,
0:24.6	poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.
0:29.7	If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds.
0:36.0	Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time.
0:38.7	For more details about in our time and for our terms of use please go to BBC.co.
0:43.2	UK slash radio 4. I hope you enjoy the program.
0:47.0	Hello in a letter to a colleague the Nobel Prize winning chemist Max Perroutz tried to
0:51.4	convey the crucial importance of crystallography to our understanding of the world.
0:56.0	Perrutz wrote that the technique explains why blood is red and grass is green,
1:02.0	why diamond is hard and wax is soft, why graphite
1:06.0	writes on paper and silk is strong, why glaciers flow and iron gets hard when
1:11.5	you hammer it.
1:13.0	Crystallography is the study of the structure of solids,
1:16.0	and for centuries our knowledge of crystal structures
1:18.0	was based on little more than their physical appearance. But a hundred years ago in 1912 the father and son team of
1:24.4	Lawrence and William Bragg developed X-ray crystallography, a technique which uses
1:29.2	x-rays to work out the precise arrangements of atoms within a crystal.
1:34.0	The ramifications of their discovery revolutionised molecular analysis across scientific disciplines.
1:40.0	And since then, 28 Nobel Prizes have been awarded for work related to x-ray
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.