Crystallography is the branch of science devoted to the study of molecular and crystalline structure and properties. The word crystallography is derived from the Ancient Greek word κρύσταλλος, and γράφειν. In July 2012, the United Nations recognised the importance of the science of crystallography by proclaiming 2014 the International Year of Crystallography.
Neutron diffraction or elastic neutron scattering is the application of neutron scattering to the determination of the atomic and/or magnetic structure of a material. A sample to be examined is placed in a beam of thermal or cold neutrons to obtain a diffraction pattern that provides information of the structure of the material. The technique is similar to X-ray diffraction but due to their different scattering properties, neutrons and X-rays provide complementary information: X-Rays are suited for superficial analysis, strong x-rays from synchrotron radiation are suited for shallow depths or thin specimens, while neutrons having high penetration depth are suited for bulk samples.
Clifford Glenwood Shull was an American physicist.
David Delano Clark was a nuclear physicist best known for his work at Cornell University building nuclear reactors and using them to perform neutron activation analysis.
G. Norris Glasoe was an American nuclear physicist. He was a member of the Columbia University team which was the first in the United States to verify the European discovery of the nuclear fission of uranium via neutron bombardment. During World War II, he worked at the MIT Radiation Laboratory. He was a physicist and administrator at the Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Wayne A. Hendrickson is an American biophysicist and university professor at Columbia. Dr. Hendrickson is a university professor at Columbia University in the department of biochemistry and molecular biophysics and Violin Family Professor of Physiology and Cellular Biophysics. He is also Chief Life Scientist in the Photon Sciences Directorate at Brookhaven National Laboratory and scientific director of the New York Structural Biology Center. Hendrickson has a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin at River Falls, a Ph.D. in biophysics at Johns Hopkins University with Warner Love, and postdoctoral research experience with Jerome Karle at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). He and his colleagues use biochemistry and x-ray crystallography to study molecular properties in atomic detail with current emphasis on membrane receptors and cellular signaling, on viral proteins and HIV infection, on molecular chaperones and protein folding, and on structural genomics of membrane proteins. Hendrickson's advances in diffraction methodology have contributed significantly to the emergence of structural biology as a major force in modern biology and molecular medicine.
Sow-Hsin Chen, was a Hoklo Taiwanese physicist and Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He was a recognized pioneer in the research of the dynamic properties of supercooled and interfacial water with the use of neutron scattering techniques. As an educator, he was recognized for his training of young scientists in the use of those same techniques. Regarding hydrogen storage, his research focused on the use of activated carbon to allow hydrogen to be stored at room temperature.
Benjamin S. Hsiao is an American materials scientist and educator. He served as the vice-president for research and chief research officer at Stony Brook University from May 2012 to December 2013.
Ernest Omar Wollan was an American physicist who made major contributions in the fields of neutron scattering and health physics.
Stephen H. White is an American Biophysicist, academic, and author. He is a Professor Emeritus of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of California, Irvine.
Brent Fultz is an American physicist and materials scientist and one of the world's leading authorities on statistical mechanics, diffraction, and phase transitions in materials. Fultz is the Barbara and Stanley Rawn Jr. Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science at the California Institute of Technology. He is known for his research in materials physics and materials chemistry, and for establishing the importance of phonon entropy to the phase stability of materials. Additionally, Fultz oversaw the construction of the wide angular-range chopper spectrometer (ARCS) instrument at the Spallation Neutron Source and has made advances in phonon measuring techniques.
William I. F. David is a professor of Materials Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Oxford, an STFC Senior Fellow at the ISIS neutron source at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and a Fellow of St Catherine's College, Oxford.
Three-dimensional X-ray diffraction (3DXRD) is a microscopy technique using hard X-rays to investigate the internal structure of polycrystalline materials in three dimensions. For a given sample, 3DXRD returns the shape, juxtaposition, and orientation of the crystallites ("grains") it is made of. 3DXRD allows investigating micrometer- to millimetre-sized samples with resolution ranging from hundreds of nanometers to micrometers. Other techniques employing X-rays to investigate the internal structure of polycrystalline materials include X-ray diffraction contrast tomography (DCT) and high energy X-ray diffraction (HEDM).
Jingguang Chen is a Chinese-American chemical engineer. He is the Thayer Lindsley Professor of Chemical Engineering at Columbia University, with a joint appointment as Senior Chemist at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory. Over the course of his career Chen has made significant contributions to the fundamental understanding and use of novel materials for catalytic and electrocatalytic applications, including research into the development of bimetallic and transition metal carbide catalysts.
Renata Maria Mattosinho Wentzcovitch is a Brazilian/Italian American physicist. She was born in Campinas (SP) and grew up in the ABC region on the outskirts of São Paulo, Brazil. She is a faculty member of the Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics and the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University. She is also a senior staff scientist at the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University. Before joining the Columbia University faculty, she worked for the University of Minnesota. She was a faculty member in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and a member of the graduate faculties in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Chemical Physics Program, and Computational Science Program. Her research focuses on developing and applying materials simulation methods at extreme pressure and temperature conditions, especially planet-forming materials. She is currently Vice-President of the Mineral and Rock Physics Section of the American Geophysical Union.
Peter F. Green is a materials scientist and the Deputy Laboratory Director for Science and Technology at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Vanessa K. Peterson is a Neutron Instrument Scientist, at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO). She established an independent research program at ANSTO which specialised on improving understanding of energy systems and how they work. She manages the Echidna program, a high-resolution powder diffractometer, as well as Wombat - a high-intensity powder diffractometer. Peterson's expertise includes synchtron and laboratory x-ray techniques, as well as neutron powder diffraction, as well as single crystal x-ray diffraction.
Noel Robert David Corngold was an American physicist. He was a professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology.
Thomas Vogt is a German chemist and material scientist. He is an Educational Foundation Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of South Carolina.
Anatoly I. Frenkel is an American physicist and professor. Frenkel is a researcher in the physicochemical properties of materials, focusing on the processes that link the nanoscale details of their structure to the mechanisms of work. His work has led to new techniques for materials characterization, including machine learning methods for X-ray absorption spectroscopy and multimodal, operando methods for catalytic studies using synchrotron radiation.
