that perhaps what was happening in the Laue experiment was that the different
crystal planes which had geometric determined interplanar distances were selecting
out from the white radiation those frequencies which gave the observed interference
spots [19–23]. Moseley was more scathing in his criticism “The men who did the
work (the German experiments of passing X-rays through crystals) failed to understand what it meant and gave an explanation which was obviously wrong. After
much work Darwin and I found the real meaning of the experiments” [21, 40].
William Henry Bragg’s interest in X-rays and γ-rays started round 1907, and he
was sceptical of Stoke and Thomson’s views that they were pulses of electromagnetic radiation and favoured their description as neutral pairs of material particles.
Between 1885 and 1908, he was the Professor of Mathematics and Experimental
Physics at the University of Adelaide, Australia, and returned to England to take up
the chair at the University of Leeds. His son William Lawrence Bragg obtained a
first-class honours degree in Mathematics in 1908 in Adelaide and returned to the
England with his parents and enrolled at Trinity College Cambridge and obtained a
first-class honours degree in Natural Science in 1912. The father had conveyed his
enthusiasm for physics to his son, and they spent much time discussing his father’s
research and the recent developments in the study of X-rays. The combination of
genetic inheritance, his father’s interest in X-rays and a broad education in mathematics and the physical sciences meant that Bragg Jr. appreciated more clearly than
the majority of 22 year olds the importance of von Laue’s publication on the
diffraction patterns of X-rays by crystals. In a remarkable example of synchronicity,
he made a singular contribution to the development of science in the twentieth
century. His interpretation of von Laue’s X-ray diffraction patterns set in train a
series of discoveries which enabled chemists to determine the structures of chemical
compounds at the atomic level for the first time. This resulted in X-ray crystallography eventually becoming the most important physical technique for revealing the
structures at atomic resolution not only for simple salts and molecules but also
metals, alloys, ceramics, liquid crystals, hormones, vitamins and important classes
of biologically important molecules, viz., proteins, enzymes and nucleic acids.
Invariably, but not always, the structural determination resulted in a deeper understanding and interpretation of the function of the molecule. The Braggs were also
instrumental in developing techniques which enabled the technique to be applied to
increasingly complex species and ultimately to biological molecules. It was in
W.L. Bragg’s laboratories 40 years later, that Perutz and Kendrew solved the
structures of myoglobin and haemoglobin and Watson and Crick proposed the
structure of DNA. Many distinguished crystallographers received their training in
X-ray crystallography under his guidance as postgraduate students or postdoctoral
fellows. A more complete list of scientists who obtained Nobel Prizes for X-ray
crystallography and related techniques are summarised in Table 1. With P.P. Ewald
he was instrumental in setting up the International Union of Crystallography, which
provided an important forum for progressing the interdisciplinary nature of the
subject and the development of new techniques for obtaining X-ray crystallographic
structural information for an extraordinary range of materials which went on to shape
our century and provide the practitioners with the computer programmes and
Early History of X-Ray Crystallography
15
crystal planes which had geometric determined interplanar distances were selecting
out from the white radiation those frequencies which gave the observed interference
spots [19–23]. Moseley was more scathing in his criticism “The men who did the
work (the German experiments of passing X-rays through crystals) failed to understand what it meant and gave an explanation which was obviously wrong. After
much work Darwin and I found the real meaning of the experiments” [21, 40].
William Henry Bragg’s interest in X-rays and γ-rays started round 1907, and he
was sceptical of Stoke and Thomson’s views that they were pulses of electromagnetic radiation and favoured their description as neutral pairs of material particles.
Between 1885 and 1908, he was the Professor of Mathematics and Experimental
Physics at the University of Adelaide, Australia, and returned to England to take up
the chair at the University of Leeds. His son William Lawrence Bragg obtained a
first-class honours degree in Mathematics in 1908 in Adelaide and returned to the
England with his parents and enrolled at Trinity College Cambridge and obtained a
first-class honours degree in Natural Science in 1912. The father had conveyed his
enthusiasm for physics to his son, and they spent much time discussing his father’s
research and the recent developments in the study of X-rays. The combination of
genetic inheritance, his father’s interest in X-rays and a broad education in mathematics and the physical sciences meant that Bragg Jr. appreciated more clearly than
the majority of 22 year olds the importance of von Laue’s publication on the
diffraction patterns of X-rays by crystals. In a remarkable example of synchronicity,
he made a singular contribution to the development of science in the twentieth
century. His interpretation of von Laue’s X-ray diffraction patterns set in train a
series of discoveries which enabled chemists to determine the structures of chemical
compounds at the atomic level for the first time. This resulted in X-ray crystallography eventually becoming the most important physical technique for revealing the
structures at atomic resolution not only for simple salts and molecules but also
metals, alloys, ceramics, liquid crystals, hormones, vitamins and important classes
of biologically important molecules, viz., proteins, enzymes and nucleic acids.
Invariably, but not always, the structural determination resulted in a deeper understanding and interpretation of the function of the molecule. The Braggs were also
instrumental in developing techniques which enabled the technique to be applied to
increasingly complex species and ultimately to biological molecules. It was in
W.L. Bragg’s laboratories 40 years later, that Perutz and Kendrew solved the
structures of myoglobin and haemoglobin and Watson and Crick proposed the
structure of DNA. Many distinguished crystallographers received their training in
X-ray crystallography under his guidance as postgraduate students or postdoctoral
fellows. A more complete list of scientists who obtained Nobel Prizes for X-ray
crystallography and related techniques are summarised in Table 1. With P.P. Ewald
he was instrumental in setting up the International Union of Crystallography, which
provided an important forum for progressing the interdisciplinary nature of the
subject and the development of new techniques for obtaining X-ray crystallographic
structural information for an extraordinary range of materials which went on to shape
our century and provide the practitioners with the computer programmes and
Early History of X-Ray Crystallography
15