X-ray diffraction (crystallography)
Difracción de rayos X (cristalografía)
- Date
- 1912–1913 · confidence high
- Place
- Munich, Germany
- Credited to
- Max von Laue, Walter Friedrich and Paul Knipping (Munich, 1912); William Henry Bragg and William Lawrence Bragg (Bragg's law and first structures, Leeds/Cambridge, 1913)
- People
- 👤 Max von Laue1879–1960👤 Paul Knipping1883–1935👤 Walter Friedrich1883–1968👤 William Henry Bragg1862–1942👤 William Lawrence Bragg1890–1971
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What it is
Use of crystals as diffraction gratings for X-rays, revealing at once the wave nature of X-rays and the atomic arrangement of matter. It founded structural crystallography.
What it led to
- Structure of minerals, metals, proteins and DNA (1953)
- Materials science and semiconductors
- Molecular biology and drug design
Built on
Made possible
- Atomic number (Moseley's law)1913-1914
- Ewald's spherec. 1913
- Electron diffraction1927
- DNA double-helix structure1953
- Structure of DNA
- Protein crystallography
- Modern metallography