Structure determination according to "Nature"
hhope at ucdavis.edu
Tue Apr 16 02:21:51 EST 1996
In the March 7, 1996 issue of Nature (p 27) appears an
article that among other items contains the following
description of present-day methods for structure
determination from x-ray data:
"Such structure determinations must still be done by a
trial-and-error methodology, in which diffraction spot
intensities are calculated for various possible atomic
geometries and compared with experimental intensities."
(This is just part of the description. The article
contains more, equally valuable information.)
I may be overly sensitive, but it seems to me that both the
journal and the authors need an explanation of how
crystallographers go about their business.
PS. The quoted article gives background material for a
paper on x-ray holography (p 49, same issue).
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