Crystallography for forty years

Abstract

Realizing the state of crystallography which I found 40 years ago, and comparing it with the present, I find that its transformation during this period is almost deeper than any other science. The closeness of crystallography and chemistry seems natural: both belong to sciences of an intermediate nature between exact sciences, the study of which is entirely reduced to the application of mathematical methods, and descriptive sciences, where the mathematical method is not applied at all. If we compare the role of mathematics in chemistry and crystallography 40 years ago and now, we will of course see that the latter has undergone a much greater transformation.