Chemical Crystallography in India— From Naphthalene to Gleevec

Abstract

The method of choice to determine the structure of matter at atomic resolution and at the molecular level is X-ray crystallography. Max von Laue discovered X-ray diffraction by crystals (1912) and William Henry Bragg and William Lawrence Bragg complemented the theory with the design of an X-ray spectrometer and the famous Bragg’s Law (1913). India has been an integral part of the history and development of X-ray diffraction since the work of Kedareswar Banerjee on direct methods in solving the crystal structures of naphthalene and anthrancene in the 1930s. A vertical take-off of the subject of chemical crystallography to crystal engineering happened in the last two decades. Today chemical crystallography and crystal engineering have spread horizontally into the allied fields of materials science, drug design, pharmaceutical development, nanomaterials, gas storage and solar energy devices. This account summarizes the evolution of X-ray diffraction from a fundamental technique to understanding structure–property relationships to the next challenges in studying the microstructure of crystalline solids.