Executive Committee and Council News
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John Stewart Rutherford passed away in September 2009 at the age 70 years in the aftermath of a stroke from which he had suffered in May. Remembering John for his achievements in teaching and research falls short of characterizing the entirety of his contributions to the scientific com- munity which is equally indebted to him for the energy and effort he spent in helping institutions of higher learning in emerging countries to uplift their teaching and research programs. After graduation from Glasgow University in 1959 and an interlude at an ordnance establishment in Scotland John joined the group of the late Crispin Calvo at MacMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, where in 1967 he received his PhD with a thesis on the crystal structure of selenourea. John then went on to the Department of Crystallography at the University of Pittsburgh to study the structure of anti-cancer drugs. Back in Great Britain he investigated the crystal structure of phosphorous-nitrogen ring compounds at the Unviversity of Essex, after which he returned to MacMas- ter for low-temperature diffraction studies. This was followed by a two years' engagement at the Northern Electric Company in Bramalea, Ontario, after which John joined the University of Regina, Saskatchewan, where he inves- tigated the crystal structures of disulfonates. Back in his beloved Scotland John applied his teaching skills at a high school in Linwood until 1979. This year marks a break in John's career, because from now on we see him in Africa and the Arabian Peninsula until the end of his active engagement in 2003. The first station is the University of Swaziland (1980-1982), followed by the University of the Transkei (1983-1984), the Sultan Qabos University in Oman (1995-1996), and finally the National University of Science and Technology in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe (1998-2003), where he stayed until re- tirement. All these institutions are indebted to John for his assistance in their quest towards academic excellence. John created or revised curricula, taught chemistry courses, participated actively in the administration, acting as head of the Department of Chemistry and assuming other functions which are too numerous to be listed here. |  |
After retirement in 2003 he moved back to his native Scotland, where the newly gained freedom from administrative duties enabled him to resume and further develop his reseach on theoretical crystallography, from 2005-2008 as member of the IUCr Commission on Mathematical and Theoretical Crystal- lography which he had joined since its foundation as an informal international work group in 2002 . He continued his investigations on the application of number theory - one of the most fundamental areas of mathematics - to problems involving crystal lattices. The cover of Acta Crystallographica A62 (2), a special issue on Mathematical and Theoretical Crystallography, is taken from his article Some algebraic properties of crystallographic sublattices. In later years he became increasingly interested in the applications of graph theory to problems of crystal chemistry. Here John made substantial contri- butions to a monograph on Graph Theory in Crystallography and Crystal Chemistry. His passing prevented him from finishing this important task, which will nevertheless be brought to completion and will represent a most fitting homage to his memory.
John is survived by his wife Sasha and two daughters by a previous marriage.
Wilfrid E. Klee, Baden-Baden
Professor at the Faculty of Sciences in Nancy (France), Niels Hansen passed away at the age of fifty-seven following a long period of illness.
After brilliant studies at the University of Aarhus, in Denmark, he prepared his doctorate in physical sciences at the University of New York in Buffalo under the supervision of Professor P. Coppens, a world-reputed crystallographer. In his thesis, he put forward a model to describe the electron density in solids, the importance of which is such that his name is now associated with it. Thirty years later, the Hansen-Coppens model is still the model most used by researchers in crystallography to describe the chemical bonding and the physical properties of materials related to the electron density. Understanding the behaviour of electrons in solids continued to be his main theme of research in the Hans Meitner Institute in Berlin, then in Nancy where he became Professor in 1983, in the Laboratory of Crystallography and Modelling of Mineral and Biological Materials.
His recent works, subsidised by the French National Research Agency, concern the comprehension of the piezoelectric effect which involves generating an electric field in a material such as quartz when submitted to pressure. This effect has a large number of applications in everyday life, from gas igniters to cell phones sensors and injectors. Understanding this phenomenon at the atomic level is a very important for the conception of higher performance materials.
A brilliant researcher of international status, while at the same time extremely discrete and kind, Professor Hansen was always at the disposition of PhD students and other researchers within the laboratory. He remained courageous throughout his illness, was a great contributor to the development of our laboratory and his absence will be greatly felt.
Geoffrey Stephen Douglas King passed away suddenly and unexpectedly in Leuven on Tuesday, September 11, 2007. He was 83.
Geoffrey King was born December 7, 1924 in Ealing (UK). He became Professor of Crystallography at the Faculty of Sciences of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in 1971 and Professor emeritus in 1990.
Geoffrey King was Chairman of the European Crystallographic Committee (1987-1989) and the Belgian National Committee for Crystallography (1985-1988).
In memoriam: PDF file.
On October 17, 2005 a memorial plaque in honour of Heinrich Heesch (1906 - 1995) was unveiled in Kiel by the Chairman of the German Crystallographic Association at the house in which Heesch lived for the most of his life.
Heesch studied physics and mathematics in Munich. For his Ph. D. in Zürich he concentrated on problems of mathematical crystallography. Simultaneously with C. Hermann, E. Alexander, K. Herrmann and L. Weber, he developed the 80 plane groups. Whereas these authors obtained the two-dimensional groups by diminution of the 230 three-dimensional space groups, Heesch developed them from the 17 known plane groups by deduction [1], introducing the concept of 'Blickrichtung'. Subsequently [2] he applied this concept to deduce, from the 80 plane groups, the 230 space groups, which had been described before by Federov and Schönfliess. With the help of Heesch's space group table it became easy to infer all subgroups of a given space group.
Thereafter Heesch applied the concept of 'Blickrichtung' to the 230 space groups in order to derive a kind of four-dimensional group. These groups result, if to the three coordinates x, y and z of a point in crystallographic space a fourth coordinate is added, which can have two different values [3]. Thus he introduced in 1930 what are often called black-white groups. In this paper, Heesch showed that the number of the 32 traditional (gray) crystal classes has to be increased to 122 black-white classes. In 1953 Zamorzaew proved that the number of 230 traditional space groups increases to 1651 black-white groups, which are now called Heesch-Shubnikov groups.
With the memorial plaque, the German Crystallographic Association recognises the contributions of Heinrich Heesch to crystallography [4].
[1] H. Heesch, Z. Krist. 71 (1929) 95-102.
[2] H. Heesch, Z. Krist. 72 (1929) 177-201.
[3] H. Heesch, Z. Krist. 73 (1930) 325-345.
[4] F. Liebau, Mitteilungen DGK 31 (2006) 16-18.
F. Liebau, Kiel
Full version (in German - pdf file, 2.8 Mb)
Obituary available on the website of the Journal of Applied Crystallography.
Erwin Felix LEWY-BERTAUT, member of the French "Academie des Sciences", former Directeur de l'Institut de Cristallographie a Grenoble (France) deceased in Grenoble on November 6th, 2003.
Erwin Lewy was born as a member of a cultivated Jewish family in the small town of Leobschutz in the year 1913. Leobschutz was situated in Upper Silesia which was then part of the German Empire. The place was, however, very close to the border of Austrian-Hungarian Empire and is now situated in Poland near to the Polish-Slowakian border. His father was professor for classical languages (Latin and Greek) in the local Gymnasium and Erwin Lewy first enrolled in the University of Freiburg and studied law and philosophy (with Heidegger). As a consequence of the political change in Germany he emigrated to France in 1933. He arrived finally at Bordeaux and changed to science. He once told me that after the events in Germany he was unable to follow the humanitarian ideas of his youth and he decided to concentrate on a subject far from any ideologie. He joined the French Army in 1939 interrupting his PhD-thesis at Bordeaux and after the French defeat he received a temporary identity card under the name Felix BERTAUT. During the occupation he was first in the southern part of France controlled by the Vichy government but joined then the Laboratoire Central des Poudres in Paris where he came in contact with Crystallography. Finally after some dangerous situations with police controls he joined the team of professor Louis Neel in Grenoble. Under the guidance of Neel the Laboratoire d'Electrostatique et de Physique du Metal (LEPM) was created as the first CNRS institute outside Paris.
Erwin Lewy obtained a CNRS research fellowship as Felix Bertaut and choose a new thesis subject "Study of size statistical distribution of iron grains by means of x-rays". His thesis was in close relation with the main subject of Neel, magnetism and it was also very modern in the sense of industrial application and nanotechnology. The thesis was defended in 1949 and the method developed by Bertaut is still a reference in powder diffraction. Inspired by the first neutron diffraction experiments on antiferromagnetic MnO Neel and Bertaut decided to establish neutron diffraction in Grenoble. Bertaut went several times to the United States in order to learn in Brookhaven with Corliss and Hastings about the new techniques. After the decision of the French government to install an atomic research center in Grenoble (C.E.N.G.) under the direction of Neel. Bertaut himself created the "Diffraction Neutronique" laboratory within the CENG which he directed from 1958 to 1976. A unique discovery related with the name of Bertaut (together with Francis Forrat and Rene Pauthenet) was the synthesis of rare earthy iron garnet ferrites and the detailed study of their magnetic structure and properties.
The L.E.P.M. increased in size over the years and was split in 1971 in several independent ones. Among them was the Laboratoire de Cristallographie headed by Felix Bertaut from 1971 to 1982. In 1963 I joined his research group as the first German student and it took me some time to realize his German origin. But I was then deeply impressed to observe the many contacts which he had already established with German laboratories during the fifties despite the destiny of his family. Many foreign visitors (established scientists as well as PhD-students) created a lively international atmosphere. This experience has definitely influenced me to open my own laboratory to guests from abroad. The idea of a High Flux Neutron Reactor as a common German-French project has been launched in Grenoble during the first International Conference on Neutron Scattering in 1963. It has been promoted by Neel and Bertaut and let in 1967 to the High Flux Research reactor at the ILL: The name of the Institut Laue-Langevin combines scattering and crystallography with magnetism in a convincing way. Now the German-French nucleus has become a real European institution and was the main reason to construct the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) at Grenoble.
Felix Bertaut contributed to various areas of crystallography. Powder diffraction and grain size distribution has already been mentioned. His share in establishing the "Direct Methods" has partially be ignored as the main articles have been published in French during the fifties. The definition of the concept of Group Theorie to predict magnetic structures were, however, applied in many neutron diffraction laboratories around the world. Due to his broad education in chemistry, physics and mathematics he always combined synthesis of new materials (mainly oxides and sulfides) with their physical (mainly magnetic) properties. He was member of IUCr committees and from 1975-1981 of the Executive Committee. Awarded by several prizes and acknowledged as Professor Honoris Causa by Universities in Sweden and Germany, he became a full member of the French Academie of Sciences in 1979.
Erwin Felix Lewy Bertaut was "un savant pas seulement un scientifique" Furthermore he was a Humanist in the classical sense of the world, a witness of the twentieth century, a convinced European, a great crystallographer and a remarkable man.
Professor Bertaut (right) was awarded the title Dr. Honoris Causa at the University of Frankfurt in 1980.
PDF brochure (6.2 Mb), bilingual (French/English)
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Prof. Dr. Peter Paufler (Dresden), 65th birthday |
An article in the "Dresdner Universitaets Journal" entitled: Will a green mineral soon have the name "Pauflerite"? reports about a very unusual birthday present that Peter Paufler, Professor for crystallogaphy at the TU Dresden, received on occasion of his 65th birthday on February 18th this year.
On this day a special colloquium of the crystal physics section of the German Crystallographic Association (DGK) was held in Dresden. Professor Stanislav Filatov, chair of crystallography at the University of St. Petersburg, Russia, announced that a new mineral discovered by his group shall be named after Paufler. The mineral was found on the Kamtschatka peninsula after the 1975/76 vulcanic eruption. The Commission for New Minerals and Mineral Names of the International Mineralogical Association (IMA) is currently considering this proposed name.
The new mineral consists of the elements vanadium, sulphur and oxygen. As it formed under high pressure and at very high temperatures, special properties may be expected. Therefore Prof. Filatov and his group are working on the synthesis of the mineral..
The tributes at the colloquium in Paufler's honour emphasized the significance of this scientist and the high appreciation of his collegues and coworkers. He was further honoured by a special issue of the journal "Crystal Research and Technology" with contributions of 20 international groups (Volume 40, 2005, Number 1-2), which also contains a biography of Prof. Dr. Peter Paufler in English .
In addition, he was awarded the "Carl Hermann Medaille" from the German Crystallographic Association (DGK) for his lifelong scientific work(*).
He received the prize at the annual meeting of the DGK in Cologne this March, especially in recognition of his numerous theoretical and experimental contributions to the field of physical crystallogaphy and materials science and as a particular acknowledgement of his unwavering activity under politically difficult conditions in the former German Democratic Republic..
(*) additional information on the DGK-homepage (PDF file, 99Kb)
 | Honour for Giovanni Ferraris - Congratulations! |
The Darmstadt University of Technology (Germany) awards Professor Giovanni Ferraris the title
Doctor Rerum Naturalium Honoris Causa (Dr. rer. nat. h.c.)
for his outstanding scientific achievements in the field of structural crystallography in mineralogy and materials science.
The day of awarding the certificate is November the 26th 2004, the day of conferring is the day of the confirmation by the senate, this was May 19th, 2004.
The Gregori Aminoff price for 2005 is awarded to Dr. Ho-Kwang Mao, Geophysical Laboratory, Washington DC, USA, for his pioneering research of solid materials at ultrahigh pressure and temperatures.
Chronology of the Aminoff Prize pop-up window: to see it, you need to activate ECMAscript ("Javascript") in your browser
