The Max von Laue’s discovery of the diffraction of X-rays by crystals in 1912 and subsequent diffraction experiments of William Henry Bragg and William Lawrence Bragg significantly changed the subject of crystallography towards crystal structure analysis. The lecture focuses on the history of crystallography since the first serious work on geometrical crystallography by Johannes Kepler in 1611 (A New Year's Gift of Hexagonal Snow) till the crucial diffraction experiment of Laue, Friedrich and Knipping in 1912. This contribution illustrates the main areas of crystallographic research at that time and important milestones in the scientific progress in crystallography of that time.
Study of crystal morphology has played a central role for many centuries. Nicolaus Steno studied in 17th century quartz crystals and noted that, despite differences in size and crystal habit, the angles between corresponding planes were constant (law of constancy of interfacial angles). This law was repeatedly later restated by Romé de l’Isle and Domenico Guglielmini. Christian Samuel Weiss and Frierich Mohs made also significant contributions. William Henry Miller developed the familiar hkl notation for description of crystal faces (around 1839) and constructed the first two-circle goniometer for study of crystal morphology. Victor Mordechai Goldschmidt should be mentioned for his systematic study of crystal morphology and for his well-known Atlas der Krystallformen (1913); an extensive collection of crystal drawings.
Worth-noting is the building-block theory of crystal structures, introduced by René-Just Haüy in 1822 (Traité de Cristallographie), which led directly to the lattice models. Haüy suggested that crystals are composed of array of blocks, called integral molecules (i.e. unit-cell in current terminology). He also showed that it is possible to construct different external shapes of crystal by replicating the same basic blocs in different ways. Symmetry was proved to be essential. A few years later, August Bravais correctly derived the 14 three-dimensional lattices that now carry hid name. At the begging of 19th century, the term “isomorphism” and “polymorphism” was introduced (Romé de l’Isle) and intensively studied (E. Mitscherlich). Paul von Groth – a founder of Zeitschrift für Kristallographie (1877) – made a significant contribution to the chemical and physical crystallography at the end of 19th century.
Study of groups and its application to crystallography was a fruitful field of research in the 19th century. It is very interesting fact, that all of the 230 space groups were independently derived by Arthur Moritz Schöenflies, Evgraf Stepanovich Fedorov and William Barlow at the approximately same time in 1980s.
This contribution is partly based on [1-4].