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A new and multifaceted gem of a film produced by one of Britain’s flashiest scientific facilities, the Diamond Light Source, explores the histories and mysteries of X-ray crystallography. The technique emerged from early 20th century physics but its power to reveal the inner atomic and molecular structures of matter has revolutionised mineralogy, chemistry and biology and remains a driving force of discovery to this day.
Regular readers of this blog will know that I have raised this subject once or twice (or maybe three or more times) over the past year but it’s a hard one to put down. Like an ornately cut crystal, it has many sides. As you turn it over and over, new gleams keep catching the eye.
The film is part of the rolling centenary celebrations of crystallography that started in 2012 and will only conclude next year. The commemorations are extended because the dramatic emergence of X-ray crystallography on the scientific scene in 1912 through experiments conceived by Max von Laue, brilliantly seized on and interpreted by the father and son team of William and Lawrence Bragg, was immediately followed by a rush of important developments. The Braggs began publishing a string of landmark papers in 1913, reporting the inner atomic structures of salts and diamond, and played pivotal roles in nurturing the newfound science of crystallography and propelling it through the traditional boundaries between scientific disciplines. Von Laue was rewarded with a Nobel prize in 1914, while the honour was conferred on the Braggs the following year.
Titled The Braggs’ Legacy, the film explains the key experiments and insights achieved in 1912 and the subsequent efflorescence of the field of structural analysis. It is dense and multilayered, fascinating and charming. You will want to pay close attention but the interleaving of the historical tale with archive images and footage, interviews with crystallographers and historians, and live and animated explanations of the technique (including the best demonstration of Bragg’s law that I have ever seen) is rich and satisfying. Inevitably, the very curious may be left hankering for more but it is the best hope of a film like this to spark an unexpected interest.
Intensely scientific it may be but what really shines through is the human element — and the strong community feeling that has permeated crystallography since its inception. Of course the strains of envy and competition have always been there too — the brouhaha over the structure of DNA cannot be forgotten (and crops up in the film) — but the sweetest moment of The Braggs’ Legacy is Professor Tom Blundell’s reflection that scientists are attracted to the field not just because crystals are beautiful, but because crystallographers are beautiful too.
Do have a look.
@Stephen_Curry is a professor of structural biology at Imperial College, vice-chair of Science is Vital and a director of CaSE.
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