Crystallography: past and present

In the 19th century, crystallography referred to the study of crystal shapes. Such studies by Hauy and Bravais allowed the establishment of important hypotheses such as (i) les molecules integrantes qui sont censees etre les plus petits solides que l'on puisse extraire d'un mineral [1], (ii) the definition of the crystal lattice and (iii) le cristal est clivable parallelement a deux ou trois formes cristallines [2]. This morphological crystallography defined a crystal like a chemically homogeneous solid, wholly or partly bounded by natural planes that intersect at predetermined angles [3]. It described the main symmetry elements and operations, nomenclatures of different crystal forms and also the theory of twinning. A breakthrough appeared in 1912 with the use of X-rays by M. von Laue and W.H. and W.L. Bragg. This experimental development allowed the determination of the atomic content of each unit cell constituting the crystal and defined a crystal as any solid in which an atomic pattern is repeated periodically in three dimensions, that is, any solid that diffracts an incident X-ray beam [3]. Mathematical tools like the Patterson methods, the direct methods, were developed. The way for solving crystalline structure was opened first for simple compounds and at that time crystallography was associated mainly with perfect crystals. In the fifties, crystallographers already had most apparatus and fundamental methods at their disposal; however, we had to wait for the development of computers to see the full use of these tools. Furthermore the development of new sources of neutrons, electrons and synchrotron X-rays allowed the studies of complex compounds like large macromolecules in biology. Nowadays, one of the new frontiers for crystallographers is to relate the crystal structure to its physical-chemical-biological properties, this means that an accurate structural determination is needed to focus on a selective part of the structure (chemical order, anisotropy, charge transfer, magnetic order) versus an external parameter like temperature, pressure, magnetic or electric field. Modern crystallography is also extended to the study of very small crystals, powders, ill-ordered or non-crystallized materials. Thus presently, crystallography is concerned with any solid that scatters an incident beam. Nevertheless, as quoted by A. Guinier, the problems facing crystallographers have only changed, ... new ones have appeared which require reflection and imagination, ... and which in turn may still bring much joy to all those who like crystallography [4]. Such developments open up crystallography to modern materials like artificial ones and nanostructures with low- and/or multi-scaled-periodicities and/or extremely small crystal size and to materials of the real world, with mixtures of phases and/or amorphous contribution and/or defects, a common characteristic of ancient materials analysed in patrimonial research. In our contribution we will show by selected examples that these improvements were allowed (i) by the use of powerful sources, apparatus and detectors which allow micro-diffraction, in-situ diffraction, spectroscopy, resonant scattering, inelastic scattering, coherent scattering, (ii) by the development of methods like diffraction anomalous fine structure (DAFS), pair distribution function (PDF), simulated annealing, single object reconstruction, (iii) by combination of scattering and spectroscopy and by combination of scattering and microscopy. Such combination of different approaches is very efficient and, as said by H. Curien at the IUCr Bordeaux Congress in 1990, in crystallography, there is a constant alternation between the crystal space and its associated reciprocal space, ... the alternation between experiment and model building is another feature of crystallography activity ..., the crystallographer relies both on his computer and on his diffractometer ..., all these dualistic complementarities are responsible for the fact that crystallographers tend to waver between the description of atomic structures and the explanation of macroscopic properties of solid matter [5].