Pages from Crystallography News Dec 98

Pages from issue 67 December 1998

In addition to the Presidents remarks in this page there are:

From the President and the Treasurer

A Guide to IUCr Subscriptions, the Royal Society and the BCA

The Current Position

Until 1999, the Royal Society has been the UK adhering body to the International Union of Crystallography. It has paid 100% of the UK subscription for category 5 IUCr membership, but since 1996 has invoiced the BCA for the difference between the category 5 and category 4 subscriptions, because the Royal Society believes we should only be category 4 members (their stated policy for all scientific unions is that as far as practical we should be in a category below the Americans, and on a par with Germany and France). The amount of this difference is £2200. Thus the BCA has paid £2200 in each of the years 1996, 1997 and 1998 and will do so again in 1999, in order to maintain category 5 IUCr membership.

What has changed?
The Royal Society has now made decisions:

(a) to cease being the adhering body on most scientific unions where there is an appropriate UK society as of 1999/2000, allowing the national association - meaning the BCA in our case - to take over. We welcome this.

(b) to only pay 49% of the annual subscription for the category they think we should be from 2000. Their stated reasoning behind this is that they no longer wish to have a "controlling interest" in the societies' international interactions, and want to encourage the societies to have more involvement through their increased financial ownership of international participation.

What does this mean for the BCA ?

Decision (a) is easy - the necessary procedures are under way. In future, the BCA will pay the IUCr annual subscription direct, and will invoice the Royal Society for their contribution. Decision (b) means that the BCA has a decision of its own to make.

Alternative A - take up adherence at category 4. This would mean that our total annual IUCr subscription would be £4400. The Royal Society thinks we should be category 4, and so would pay half of this, i.e. £2200. Thus our liability would be £2200 annually, the same as has been the case from 1996 onwards.

Alternative B - take up adherence to the IUCr at category 5, maintaining the current level. The US is category 5; the French and Germans are category 4. This would mean that our total annual IUCr subscription would be £6600. The Royal Society thinks we should be category 4, so will still only pay £2200. Thus our liability would be £4400 annually, an increase of £2200 over recent years.

The BCA Council has decided that we should maintain category 5 membership.
The reasons for this are as follows:

1. If we go to category 4, this will leave the USA alone as category 5. What this means effectively is that at the General Assemblies of the IUCr, the BCA would have one less vote in decisions than the USA. The BCA Council considers that given the fact that the BCA is the second largest national crystallography association in the world, it is important to maintain our influence in IUCr matters. While we have no fear that the USA representatives would use their extra power to our detriment, we do nevertheless consider that it would be wrong to leave the majority power in one single country. It should also be borne in mind that at present crystallography in the USA is very heavily weighted towards biology, and so this may not represent the same interests as our broader community in the UK.

2. The UK has a long and proud tradition of crystallography, right back to the beginning. This has often culminated in a relatively large number of Nobel prizes and many other accolades for UK based crystallography. The opinions of the UK in crystallographic matters are highly respected throughout the world. Next year the UK will be hosting one of the major scientific events of the year -- the Glasgow IUCr Congress. Crystallography in the UK is very much alive and vibrant (witness the turn-out for our BCA Meetings), and we believe that ours is an image of progress for the future. Council is concerned that by dropping to category 4 the wrong sort of message would be sent out to the scientific community at large, and perhaps more importantly to the Government and its agencies. This applies equally to science in general rather than to crystallography alone.

Mike Glazer, BCA President,
Steve Maginn. BCATreasurer,
29 October 1998

Fiscal Chemistry

Alan L. Mackay
Department of Crystallography, Birkbeck College (University of London),
Malei Street, London WC1E 7HX, U.K.

Passing a blue plaque on the wall of a house at No. 9 Fitzroy Street, London W1, inscribed to the memory of A. W. Hofmann (l8I8 - 1892), Professor of Chemistry, led me to look up Hofmann in the classic Encyclopedia Britannica of 1910, and this started a chain of thought.

There is an unsigned article redo lent with biblical strictures (Acts 18:17) on the apathy for chemistry which Hofmann experienced: "In England. however, people cared for none of these things, and were blind to the commercial potentialities of scientific research" - although BASF had synthesized indigo and ruined the indigo industry of the British Empire. The corresponding retribution was visited on Britain when, in the 1914-1918 war, German chemistry provided better explosives, but the synthetic production of acetone by Chaim Weizmann saved the day and influenced the Balfour Declaration, so that Israel at its 50th anniversary should remember the acetone molecules made by its first president.

It is said that a student came up to J. D. Bernal after a lecture and explained that he had found the lecture so enthralling that he had been unable to take notes, so could he borrow the lecturer's notes? Bernal sheepishly produced an old envelope with three almost illegible words on it. Accordingly, I quote the following only from memory of a lecture bearing on the theme of German chemistry.

The First World War had shown, among other things, how superior the Germans were in organic chemistry so that after the war the British government imposed a duty on organic chemicals to encourage the British chemical industry. Calcium carbide was imported from Norway, where it was made with hydroelectric power and was widely used for making acetylene for welding and for bicycle lamps - at school we used to disrupt classes by dropping calcium carbide into the ink wells - but calcium carbide was classed as an organic chemical and thus attracted import duty.

The Norwegian government contested this decision, and a court was asked to rule on whether calcium carbide was organic or inorganic. The British government called a senior organic chemist as its expert witness. and the Norwegian government appointed the young mineralogical professor V. M. Goldschmidt (1888- 1947). Goldschmidt was unequal when it came to organic chemistry so he asked W. L. Bragg to find the crystal structure of calcium carbide. Bragg did this very quickly and not altogether satisfactorily, but it was clear that the structure was that typical of all inorganic salt. With the modern crystallography, Goldschmidt was able to tie up the organic chemist in cross-questioning, and the court finally ruled that calcium carbide was inorganic and thus exempt from tax.

A grateful Norwegian government then gave Goldschmidt a small amount of money to set up in X-ray crystallography. He could not compete with Bragg, who was then solving very complex silicates, so he set to work to measure the cell dimensions of as many simple binary crystals as he could find. From this he constructed the tables of ionic radii which are still in use!

Editor's Note: I am grateful to Alan for sending me this copy of an article which first appeared in 'The Chemical Intelligencer' in October 1998, and to the editor of that journal, Istvan Hargittai, for permission to reproduce it here.

Geological actvities

Try out the 'Rocky Questions' in this month's competition.

Geologists run a club with activities for young people. Find out more at: 'Rockwatch', The Green, Witham Park, Waterside South, Lincoln, LN5 7HR

Adults may prefer the 'Rock and Gem' magazine published quarterly, details from:
Tony Rance, P.O.Box 72, Maidenhead, Berks, SL6 7GB

EDITORIAL

Invitation to contribute to Special Issue on Software for March 99
miscellaneous news items

The December and March issues of 'Crystallography News' normally contain many pages devoted to plans for the Annual BCA Spring meeting to be held the next Easter. Since we are organising IUCr99 in August there will be no Spring meeting in 1999, so there was space in this issue to print some more general articles such as a 'Letter to the Editor' from Lachlan Cranswick. He raises an important point about software. I am inviting academic software authors to describe their products in the next issue, March 1999, deadline 6th February. Contributions should not exceed one A4 page when printed; remember that the newsletter is reduced in size to A5 and printed in black and white; text should be printed in a font 12 point or more. Commercial software vendors are welcome to join in by taking out an advertisement. Contributions should state hardware and system requirements and what aspect of crystallography the program covers, such as structure determination, simulations, molecular diagram drawing, teaching, etc. David Watkin (Oxford) has taken the opportunity to describe the 'CRYSTALS32' program a little later in this issue.

Editor's Archive - needs chemistry? and lacks pictures!

I now have copies of all the current series of BCA Newsletters in the 'Editor's Archive' and most of those issued by the Institute of Physics(IOP), X-Ray Analysis Group. (there are a few missing ones issued between 1957 and 1979, they are No.s 3, 9,16, 22, 58 ).
A chemist friend pointed out that the BCA was formed by merging a group from the RSC with one from the IOP, so there may be older newsletters issued by the Chemical Crystallography Group of the RSC before 1982. I would be grateful for any information relating to these newsletters and for donations of spare copies to the 'Editor's Archive'.

From time to time I am approached by people who want a photograph to illustrate the book they are writing about crystallography; they usually ask for pictures of people but sometimes want molecular diagrams or old equipment. I am planning to collect an 'Editor's Archive' of photographs and would be most grateful for copies of any you may be able to donate, preferably annotated with the date and place where they are taken with a caption naming any people. I would also be grateful for the address of any similar archives where I can find pictures when my own resources fail.

Information wanted about a crystallographer.
One problem with the archive is that it begins in 1957. I was recently asked for information about an H.T.Flather, described as a crystallographer, who was living in Blackheath, London in 1949. He made beautiful polyhedral models, exhibited at Mathematical Association meetings. Does any one know what crystallography he did? Or where he worked?

SAXS beyond the research lab

SAX/SWAX techniques bear considerable potential as tools for in-line industrial process monitoring wherever nanostructure counts for product quality. Fields of interest are: LC-plastics, microporous ceramics, zeolites, detergents, oils, fats, pharmaceuticals and many others. Details on 'EUROSAX' are on the Web at http://www.oeaw.ac.at/ibr/xray.html

Peter Laggner wants to set up a Forum for SAXS at SAS99 and is looking for interested colleagues. Please contact him by e-mail: [email protected]

Page last updated 27 Mar 1999

BCA Home page WebMaster [email protected]
<-- Click here to return to BCA homepage