An article with the same title and nearly
with the same content of
this chapter, and a second one in the following issue, dedicated
to the
crystallographers in Spain during those years, were published in the
journal of the IUCr:
Pdf
copies of these articles can be obtained through the links shown under
their bibliographic references above or by clicking on
the images.
Also another article
with the
same title and nearly
with the same content of
this chapter, but
written in Spanish, adding the geographical situation of the
crystallographers in Spain, was also published in:
A
pdf
copy of that article can also be obtained through that link or clicking
on
the image.
Spain has been linked to
crystals since
remote times as the home of important mining ore deposits. Perhaps the
first Spanish contribution to the history of crystals was reported by Pliny
the Elder (I Century AD) in his renowned Natural
History, where he describes the windows and greenhouses of
the richer inhabitants of the Roman Empire being covered by crystals
of Lapis
specularis, the Latin name for large transparent crystals
of gypsum. This dihydrated form of calcium sulphate was extracted by
Romans in Segóbriga (La Mancha) because of its crystal
clarity, size (up to one meter) and perfect flatness. Part of this
introduction is widely documented in the article by Juan M. García Ruiz,
entitled The role of
crystallography in the study of Natural History, published
in Spanish in the Bulletin
of the Royal Spanish Society of Natural History. Geological section,
ISSN 0583-7510, Vol 100, No. 1-4, 2005, pags. 25-37.
Deposits of Lapis specularis in
Segóbriga (La Mancha) and a sample of that mineral
The vast amount of
mineralogical
information
contained in thePliny’s
Natural History was preserved and
enhanced in
the Book
XVI on Stones and Metals of the of EtymologiarumofIsidor
of
Seville (560-636). It is also in the Lapidarium
of Alfonso
X
(1221-1284), a fascinating work by a group of Muslim, Hebrew and
Christian sages from a time when peaceful multicultural collaboration
was demonstrated to be possible. Nevertheless, it was the unparalleled
talent of the Arabian geometers in investigating the problem of
tessellation of two-dimensional space, which made the most important
pre-Renaissance Spanish contribution to crystallography and geometrical
art. The decorative symmetry of the tiling in the Alhambra Palace in
Granada is today used to teach symmetry all over the world.
Left: Sample of
mosaics in La Alhambra
(Granada, XIII Century) Right: A view of
La Alhambra (Granada, XIII
Century)
Several hundred
years later, in the XV Century, we find many examples
of interest in bidimensional structures and symmetry, as in
the
ceiling of the main rooms of castles, palaces and special buildings
such as the University of Alcala or Segovia’s Castle, near
Madrid.
The variety of Spanish mining and
the
enormous
richness of the American ores motivated the work of excellent
metallurgists and mineralogists such as Juan
de Arfe Villafañe
(1535-1603), Diego
de Santiago,
and Álvaro
Alonso Barba
(1569-1662),
the author of the book Arte
de los metales. He developed the method
for
recovering silver and gold by using the mercury extracted in
Almadén
(La Mancha), the largest mercury mine in the world. In addition,
America and the Far East provided stunning and fascinating mineral
samples for collectors and scientists of the New World. The Spanish
Royal Cabinet of Natural History (Real Gabinete de
Historia Natural)
was created in 1771 from the collection of minerals of Pedro
Franco
Dávila
(1711-1786). It was probably the best
collection of
its time,
and was used byJean
Baptiste Louis Romé de Lisle (or Romé
de L’Isle,
1736-1790) during his studies on crystal morphology.
In 1799, Anales
de Historia Natural, the first Spanish scientific
periodical journal, was printed. This is where Proust, Herrgen, Del
Rio, Humboldt
and other mineralogists, educated in the Wernerian School of Freiburg,
published their first articles on the nature of crystals. The
controversy between the Werner’s
ideas on the classification of minerals based on external properties
and the new concept introduced by and the abate Romé
de L’IsleRené
Just Haüy (1743-1822) on crystal morphology is
clearly observed in the Anales
de
Historia Natural.
It demonstrates how aware Spanish science was of the crucial changes
occurring in mineralogy during the XVIII and XIX centuries.
A collection of
crystallographic solids gifted by Haüy
to the Galician mathematician José
Rodríguez González (1770-1824)
was
fully used by the crystallographers Augusto
González de Linares
(1845-1904) and Laureano
Calderón Arana (1847-1894),
who were implied in the establishment of what probably was the
first (1888) Chair of Crystallography in European
Universities (in Santiago de Compostela, Spain).
Some crystallographic models of the abate
Haüy
At
the beginning
of the XX
century, Spanish crystallographers were also aware of the international
advances in this field. For instance, Francisco
Pardillo (see his obituary written by
J.L. Amorós) immediately realised the importance
of
the investigations of Laue and in 1913 he reported these studies to
Boletín de la Real
Sociedad Española de Historia Natural, namely in the article entitled Descubrimientos recientes sobre
la estructura de los cristales.
Two
years later, in 1915, when the Braggs
shared the Nobel Prize, Blas
Cabrera –who later became director of
the Instituto
Nacional de
Física
y Química– wrote a report on the novel
application of X-rays to determine the structure of materials
in Anales
de la Sociedad Española de Física y
Química, that was published in four consecutive
communications published in 1915 (part I,
part II,
part III,
part IV).
We suggest you also to read the semblance
on Blas Cabrera published in 2013 (in Spanish).
Left: Julio
Palacios (1891-1970) Right: Gabriel
M. Cardoso (1896-1954)
Gabriel
Martín Cardoso in the Museo
Nacional de
Ciencias
Naturales
in Madrid, Julio
Palacios
(a pupil of Blas
Cabrera) at the Instituto
Nacional
de Física y Química and Francisco
Pardillo at the Department
of Mineralogy of the University of Barcelona formed the
first Spanish groups of modern Crystallography.
Luis
Rivoir and
others worked with Julio
Palacios
on structure determinations of inorganic and organic crystals and on
the perfection of the Fourier methods of analysis. Francisco
Pardillo
independently created a crystallography school in his department at the
University in Barcelona. Gabriel
Martin Cardosotrained
Julio
Garrido, who later moved to the Julio
Palacios
group.
Left:The
National Institute of Physics and Chemistry (Instituto Nacional de
Física y Química, Madrid, 1932). It was kindly
named as
“The Rockefeller” due to the fact that it was built
using
funds ($420.000) from the Rockefeller Junior Foundation. Right: The
Rockefeller”. Today, as Institute of Physical Chemistry
“Rocasolano”, is one of the research Institutes of
the
CSIC, the Spanish National Research Council
The X-ray Laboratory in "The Rockefeller"
during the 1930's. Julio Palacios is standing on the left,
behind the X-ray tube. Click on the image to get a larger copy
The Rockefeller was inaugurated on
February 6th 1932 by Fernando de los Ríos, the Minister of
Public Instruction.
Niceto
Alcalá-Zamora, President of the 2nd
Spanish Republic, visited the new building on March 7th
1932.
In
1925 the Rockefeller
Junior Foundation
estimated the cost of the building and donated $420,000. One year
later, the Spanish Government acquired the land where it is located and
commissioned the project to the architects Lacasa and Sánchez-Arcas. To perform the work, they visited
several research institutes in other countries, accompanied by Miguel
Catalán
and Enrique Moles, and were advised by a commission made,
among others, by Blas Cabrera and Julio Palacios. The German company Siemens & Halske
was responsible for the technical and scientific facilities.
Left: Luis
Brú (1909-1997) Center: José
L. Amorós (1920-2001) Right: Julio
Garrido (1911-1982)
The impetus of
several young
crystallographers after the Spanish Civil War created the foundation of
current Spanish Crystallography. Among them, Luis
Bru
pushed X-ray and electron microscopy first in the Canary Islands, later
(after 1949) in Sevilla and finally (after 1956) in the University
Complutense of
Madrid. Luis
Bru, excellent microscopist, was a staunch defender of
Crystallography in Spain, as he himself stated inan
article published in 1983 in a Spanish newspaper.
José
Luis Amorós (a former pupil of Pardillo)
was at the Instituto Lucas Mallada (CSIC) from 1942 and later on at the
University of Barcelona, at the Saint Louis University (USA) and
finally (1956) he moved to the University Complutense of Madrid where
he formed a
group of young crystallographers and crystal growers.
Cover of the
first
volume and first issue of Acta Crystallographica where the first
article was signed by Julio Garrido, from the National Institute of
Physics and Chemistry (Madrid) (click
on the image to get the article)
In 1950, the Spanish
Association of Crystallography (ACE) was founded with 35
members, including Francisco
Pardillo, Luis
Rivoir, Gabriel
Martin Cardoso, Manuel
Abad and José
Luis Amorós as the first Board of Governors.
Its first meeting was held in Barcelona.
Many important crystallographers were invited to Spain during those
years, including Taylor, Laval, Lipson, Jeffrey, Wyckoff, Hägg, Buerger, Zädonov, Fornaseri, MacGillavry, Strunz, Henry...
Ten years later, in 1960, the Ibero-American
Association for Crystallography was founded.
During those years students knew
that
Crystallography in Spain was centered around two main schools, one in
Barcelona around Manuel
Font-Altaba (University
of Barcelona) and the other in Madrid around both Sagrario
Martínez-Carreraand
Severino
García-Blanco(Institute
of Physical-Chemistry “Rocasolano”, CSIC).
This is where Sagrario
Martínez-Carrera
incorporated her experiences from Pittsburgh regarding the incipient
computing programs that replaced the Beevers-Lipson strips and the
early calculation machines. Those groups concentrated a couple of X-ray
diffraction machines for Jong-Bowman and Weissenberg methods and
started using (with many difficulties) the first IBM computers. The
70’s brought the first automated four-circle single-crystal
diffractometers which slowly replaced the older Weissenberg and
precession cameras.
Left: Weissenberg
cameras and X-ray tubes
used in Madrid during the decades 1950-1960s.
Right: The
first automated 4-circle diffractometer (PW1100) installed
in Spain, Madrid, in 1973
During many years an extra effort
was
made by the “Rocasolano”
group
in Madrid to give support to all their Spanish colleagues, by
collecting data, creating and maintaining the first crystallographic
software collections in Spain (installed in a UNIVAC mainframe of the
Spanish Ministry of Education and Science), and making an effort to
reach an agreement with the Cambridge
Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC) and the CSIC
for a free-of-charge distribution of the CSD crystallographic database
around the whole country. This agreement, thanks to the generosity of
the CCDC, later
covered all Latin American countries as well.
The influence of Crystallography, so important for the development of
Chemistry in Spain during the last third of the Twentieth Century, led
(through many efforts) to the establishment of several Crystallography
groups whose relevance is now beyond any doubt. In this enterprise, the
generation of Spanish crystallographers born around 1940 also played an
important role. Through great effort, they managed to elevate Spanish
crystallography to its rightful place on the international stage. Many
of them have passed away, including F.H. Cano
(CSIC), C. Foces-Foces
(CSIC), X. Solans
(Univ. of Barcelona) and F. Sanz (Univ. of
Valencia); others
have retired such as J.
Fayos, J.A.
Subirana (Polytechnic Univ. of
Barcelona) and M.A.
Cuevas (Univ. de Barcelona), while others are still active
including C. Miravitlles, E. Iglesias, M. Martínez-Ripoll
(CSIC) and J.M.
Amigó (Univ. of Valencia). However, unlike what
happened in
other developed countries, Crystallography in Spain, and especially in
academic institutions, still seems to remain an unresolved matter. This
is probably due to the fact that it has erroneously been considered as
a minor technical issue, whose application and interpretation is
trivial. Despite the importance of Crystallography for Biology and
Biomedicine, and despite the rather large number of research groups in
Spain (very competitive in Cellular and Molecular Biology), the lack of
resources dedicated to the few Spanish laboratories active in
macromolecular Crystallography becomes very apparent.
At the end of the eighties Spain became the first associate scientific
member of the Institute Laue-Langevin (ILL),
the high flux neutron reactor of Grenoble and new possibilities were
open for the crystallographic community including physicists,
biologists, and engineers. An increasing activity developed around
magnetic crystallography, soft condensed matter, liquids and amorphous
systems and biology. The synchrotron techniques also contributed to a
new step in the crystallographic activity with the entrance of Spain in
the European Synchrotron Radiation
Facility (ESRF).
Spanish synchrotron ALBA (November 2009)
Nevertheless, today the Spanish Group of
Crystallography and Crystal Growth
(Grupo Especializado de Cristalografía y Crecimiento
Cristalino, GE3C)
has over 200 members. If other crystallographers associated with
Neutron Users, Solid State, Proteomics, Surfaces, etc., are taken into
account about 400 Spanish researchers are currently involved in
crystallographic advances. Most Spanish crystallographers are grouped
in well-recognized teams distributed throughout Spain: the Canary
Islands, Andalusia, Valencia, Asturias, Catalonia, Galicia, the Basque
Country and of course, in Madrid, as well as others. They share over
200 X-ray diffraction machines for both powder and single crystals
diffractometers, and maintain an active participation in neutron and
synchrotron techniques in different European facilities (two Spanish
instruments at the ILL, D1B and D15, and two beamlines at the ESRF,
BM16 and BM25). In addition, the Spanish
synchrotron ALBA,
was inaugurated in March 2010 with several crystallographic beamlines,
and where electron microscopy will also be well represented, from high
resolution transmission electron microscopy to field emission electron
scanning microscopy.
The first meeting of the IUCr held in
Madrid in 1956
Spanish
crystallographers hold a yearly National Congress and have also
organized several International Seminars, Workshops, Conferences and
Meetings. At theIUCr
Executive Committee meeting arranged during the Third General Assembly
in Paris in July 1954, it was proposed that the IUCr should organize
specialized symposia between the assemblies. The first of these
meetings was held in Madrid in 1956 and since then,
specialized
Inter-Congress meetings have become a regular feature of the
Union’s activities.
Left: J.M.
Bijvoet and wife (Madrid, 1956) Right: L.O.
Brockway and
wife, and Gunnar Hägg (right) (Madrid, 1956)
Left: Ralph
W.G. Wyckoff (Madrid, 1956) Right: Paul
P. Ewald and Jorge Doetsch (right) (Madrid, 1956)
Thanks to the
explicit votes of Mario
Nardelli (Italy) and Olga
Kennard (UK), as well as to the financial support given by
M. Font-Altaba
(the Mayor of Barcelona) the 6th
European Crystallographic Meeting (ECM-6) was successfully
held in Barcelona during the summer of 1980, with Carlos Miravitlles
as Chairman.
Crystallographers
working in Spain, but especially those working on both, the Local
Organizing
and the International Program Committees, offered an
excellent organization for the XXII
Congress and
General Assembly of the International Union of Crystallography and
made Madrid-2011,
nearly one hundred years since the Laue and Bragg’s
experiments,
a memorable event from both scientific and social perspectives.
The congress brought together nearly 2800 people (1880 participants,
360 students, 350 grants, 65 exhibitors and 113 accompanying persons).
Up to 73 countries were represented with 2040 abstracts that were
finally distributed in 98 Micro-Symposia with 490 oral and 1550 poster
presentations, 20 of which were awarded and sponsored by 9 institutions
or commercial companies.
In addition, 36 Keynote speakers covered the state of art of
crystallography in many of its most important fields, from very large
macromolecular assemblies, ribosome complexes, membrane proteins,
supramolecular chemistry, structural aspects of bacterial
pathogenicity, structural basis of cell regulatory processes,
structural genomics, validation and error aspects in protein
structures, XAFS as a new tool for protein structure-function
investigations, ultrafast crystallography using X-ray free electron
lasers, coherent X-ray diffraction, single-molecule and hybrid methods,
new approaches to experimental phasing of macromolecules, automated
electron diffraction tomography as an ab-initio structure solution
method, polycrystalline materials, powder diffraction at nanoscale,
magnetic neutron crystallography, commensurate and incommensurate
structures, soft matter, solid gas materials, energy-related materials,
crystal engineering, very recent advances in crystal growth, new
topological structural characterization aspects, high-pressure
molecular crystals and mineralogy, atomic resolution real-space
imaging, and up to ornamental art of the Alhambra (from plane groups to
quasilattices), among others. In summary, it showed the most recent
research done world-wide in the most important scientific fields, from
Mineralogy up to Chemistry, Physics, Material Sciences, Nanotechnology,
Biochemistry, Biology and Biomedicine.
Left: Some
members of the Local Organizing Committee Right: Thomas A.
Steitz and Venki Ramakrishnan
accompanied by Martin M.-Ripoll (Vice-Chairman of IUCr2011) Click
on any image to get larger copies
Special mention deserved the 4 Plenary Lectures of the congress. Three
of them, based on the structural and functional aspects of ribosome,
were presented by the 2009 Chemistry Nobel Laureates, Thomas A. Steitz,
Venki Ramakrishnan and Ada Yonath. The fourth Lecture was given by Omar
M. Yaghi on metal organic frameworks. In addition, the congress
included also some other parallel events like
6 Satellite Meetings, 2 Specialized Workshops and 7 Parallel Meetings.
Crystallographers
working in Spain, but especially those working on both, the Local
Organizing
and the International Program Committees, offered an
excellent organization for the XXII
Congress and
General Assembly of the International Union of Crystallography and
made Madrid-2011,
nearly one hundred years since the Laue and Bragg’s
experiments,
a memorable event from both scientific and social perspectives. 
