CRYSTALLOGRAPHY NEWS No 21 June 1987

front cover June 87
Cover picture Carlsbad twin crystal of orthoclase. Computer drawn
by Cathy Sobhanpanah (Royal Holloway and Bedford new College)
CONTENTS

NEWS OF CRYSTALLOGRAPHERS


HONOURS AND PRIZES:

Royal Society

Dr. OLGA KENNARD, member of the MRC external scientific staff and director of the Canbridge Crystallographic Data Centre, Cambridge has recently been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. Her citation noted that: she is distinguished for her structural investigations of organic and biological molecules by diffraction methods. Her recent work on oligonucleotides has been important in recasting ideas about alternative structures for DNA segments.

1987 Distinguished Service Award

Drs. MAX PERUTZ and JOHN KENDREW were presented the 1987 Distinguished Service Award of the Miami Winter Symposium in honour of their contributions towards promoting international cooperation between biological scientists. In particular, Perutz and Kendrew were cited for their support of the founding and growth of the European Molecular Biology Organisation, now in its 24-th year. In 1962, Perutz and Kendrew together received the Nobel Prize in medicine, Perutz for his work on determining the 3-d-inensional structure of haemoglobin through X-ray diffraction and Kendrev for doing the same with myoglobin.

1987 Wolf Foundation Prize for chemistry

The Chemistry award this year ($100,000) has been awarded jointly to Professor Sir DAVID PHILLIPS, the founding President of the BCA, and to Professor DAVID BLOW, the current President of BCA for their pioneering contributions to the understanding of enzymatic catalysis through the study of enzyme structure by X-ray diffraction. The award, which is considered in the class of the Nobel, Lasker and Welch prizes, was presented to the two Davids on May 31st in the Israeli Knesset. - The full Press Release from the Wolf Foundation is given later.

I.U.Cr. First Ewald Prize - 1987

The first ever Ewald Prize of the International Union of Applied Crystallography has been awarded jointly to Professor J. M. COWLEY and Dr. A.F. MOODIE for their outstanding achievements in electron diffraction and microscopy, especially for their fundamental contributions to the theory and technique of direct imaging of crystal structures and structure defects by high resolution electron microscopy. Full details of their citation and of the prize itself are given on later pages.

Logo Wolf Foundation
THE "WOLF FOUNDATION" PRIZE IN CHEMISTRY FOR 1987

The 1987 Wolf Prize in Chemistry will be awarded to two British scientists, pioneers in the study of enzyme structure and function by means of X-ray crystallography - Professor Sir David C. Phillips (of Oxford University) and Professor David M. Blow (of London University Imperial College).

Their use of improved methods of X-ray crystallography led to the determination of the exact three-dimensional structure of enzymes - the catalysts of life processes that regulate all the biological activities in the living organism. The first animal enzyme structure to be solved by Phillips in 1965 was Lysozyme. Solving also the structure of the complex formed by the enzyme and its substrate (the molecule activated by it), he was led to suggest the "lock-and-key" mechanism in which the interaction between enzyme and substrate depends on the actual shape of the molecules.

Blow, who determined the structure of the much larger enzyme chymotrypsin in 1967, also conducted a comparative study of the activity of different enzymes, providing a first-hand demonstration of the stereo-chemical (shape-dependent) origin of their specific activities.

Following later advances, Blow and his collaborators conducted in 1981 the first experiments in protein engineering, changing the activity of enzymes by selectively changing some of its amino-acid building blocks.

These achievements followed major improvements in the methods of X-ray crystallography. Phillips (together with Arndt) improved the accuracy of crystallographic measurements by introducing automation, while Blow (together with Rossmann) succeeded in overcoming the problem of phase determination, one of the major obstacles in the interpretation of the X-ray data, Without these improvements, the accurate determination of structures of such complex systems as enzymes would have been utterly impossible, These structure determinations, and the resulting insight into the mechanism of enzyme activity that followed, formed a major step in the process of transforming the mysteries of life into the language of physical chemistry

INTERNATIONAL UNION OF CRYSTALLOGRAPHY
From:     The President of the International Union of Crystallography
Subject:     Recipients of the first Ewald Prize

Dear Colleagues,

It give me great pleasure to announce that the First Ewald Prize for outstanding contributions to the science of crystallography has been awarded jointly to

Professor J.M. Cowley and Dr A.F. Moodie

for their outstanding achievements in electron diffraction and microscopy, especially for their fundamental contributions to the theory and technique of direct imaging of crystal structures and structure defects by high resolution electron microscopy.

Their pioneering work on the dynamical scattering of electrons was reported in a series of papers in Acta Crystallographica and other journals from 1957 onwards. A theory of Fourier images led them to the multi-slice formulation of the scattering of an electron wave in its passage through a crystal. This formulation is able to take into account many hundreds of scattered beams, and has become the basis of widely-used computer programs. The theory allows the electron micrographs, obtained with modern high resolution instruments, to be reliably and quantitatively interpreted, and used for the determination of the structures of both perfect crystals and crystals containing defects. Professor Cowley and Dr Moodie, together and separately, have made many further contributions to theory, methods and results in electron diffraction and microscopy. Their work has often stressed a unified approach to diffraction and microscopy through physical optics. An overview of the whole field may be Found in Professor Cowley's book "Diffraction Physics" (1981).

John Maxwell Cowley, born in Australia in 1923 and a graduate of Adelaide University, was formerly a Chief Research Scientist at the Division of Chemical Physics, CSIRD, Melbourne, Australia. Later he was Professor of Physics at the University of Melbourne, and since 1970 has been the Galvin Professor of Physics at Arizona State University, Tempe, USA.

Alexander Forbes Moodie, born in Scotland in 1923, graduated from St. Andrews University in 1948. Since then he has been a member of CSIRO in Australia where he is a Chief Research Scientist at the Division of Chemical Physics. This Division was incorporated into the Division of Materials Science and Technolcgy at the end of 1986.

The presentation of the Ewald Prize will take place at the Opening Ceremony of the XIV International Congress of Crystallography at Perth, Western Australia, on 12 August 1987.

Please give the announcement of this award as wide publicity as possible by whatever means you have at your disposal. A copy of the original announcement of the Prize is enclosed, for information.

Yours sincerely,
Theo Hahn
President

OBITUARIES

PELLA MACHIN and MICHAEL ELDER

It is with great sadness that we record that Mike Elder and Pella Machin died in a climbing accident on 7th March, 1987. An appreciation of their work will appear in the next issue of Crystallography News.

F. RICHARD THORNLEY

Richard Thornley died at home in Glasgow on March Bth after several months of serious illness borne with characteristic fortitude. He will be sadly missed by his many friends and colleagues in the crystallographic community.
THE MACHIN AND ELDER STUDENT BURSARY
STUDENT BURSARY IN MEMORY OF
PELLA MACHIN AND MICHAEL ELDER
OF THE DARESBURY LABORATORY
The B.C.A. Council has set aside a sum of money which will be used to assist students to attend future Annual B.C.A. Meetings, at which they are contributing a paper/poster. Anyone who wishes to add to this fund is invited to write to the Treasurer, Dr. Ray Hine, Department of Physics, University College, Cardiff, with their contribution or for further details.

ANNUAL SPRING MEETING 1988
The BCA Spring Meeting next year will be held at the University of Warwick from March 28th to 30th inclusive. There will be a call for papers from all Groups in the September Newsletter and outline programs will be available at that time.

Further details may be obtained currently from Dr. Nat Alcock, Department of Chemistry, Warwick University. Dr. Alcock is acting local organiser until Dr. Keith Bowen (Department of Engineering, Warwick University) returns from the U.S. on September 1st.

INFORMATION AND COMMENTS

EDITORIAL
It is a privilege to have been asked by the BCA to edit "Crystallography News", and I am very much indebted to Moreton Moore, who has carried out this job so well for so many years, not only for creating a system which runs smoothly and well, but also for helping me to take over his mantle in a relatively painless way. One of the things I would like to do as Editor is to continue to improve the layout and content of the News, as Moreton has done over the years, so that it really does provide a useful service to Members and so that it genuinely reflects their interests. I hope that you will all feel free to make suggestions to me on how to make your newsletter even more substantial and readable. In particular I would welcome more direct scientific comment, news and letters on topics of interest so that the News becomes a genuine forum for comment on crystallographic activities Worldwide.

JOHN SQUIRE

STANDARD CRYSTALLOGRAPHIC FILE STRUCTURE - 87


How often have you been frustrated by finding that your datafile was in the wrong format far your program? And how much time have you spent in writing conversion programs to change data from one format to another?

In order to minimise these problems, the Data and Computing Commissions of the International Union of Crystallography approved, in 1981, a Standard Crystallagraphic File Structure (Acta Cryst A39 216-224). This describes a file structure that can be used to store or transfer most kinds af crystallographic data and, at the same time, is easy to program and is adaptable to individual users needs. Since 1981 the standard has been enhanced and in the mast recent release (SCFS-87) it can include all the information (including text, tables and supplementary material) required for a short structural paper in Acta Crystallagraphica including the text. It is not only designed far giving structural data, it can also include data as different as powder patterns and protein derivative structure factors.

Copies of the latest standard can be obtained from:
Dr.l.D.Brown
Institute for Materials Research
McMaster University
Hamilton, Dntario, Canada L8S 4M1

[email protected]

It is available in either hardcopy form or as a machine readable file which may be sent over the NetNorth/Bitnet/Earn networks. A user adaptable program ta read an SCFS-87 file is available by network from:

Dr H D Flack
Laboratoire de Cristallographie Universit� de Gen�ve
24 quai Ernest-Ansermet
CH-1211 Gen�ve
Switzerland
"flack@cgeuge52"

Page last updated 14 Jun 2004

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