It's 100 years since Max von Laue, of Pfaffendorf, near Koblenz, won the Nobel for the discovery that crystals could diffract x-rays, and 99 years since Sir William Bragg, of Wigton in Cumberland, shared the same prize with his son, William Lawrence Bragg, of Adelaide for understanding that x-rays could answer questions about crystals. Crystals are not just bits of gemstone – they are precise arrangements of atoms and molecules in a fixed structure. Francis Crick and James Watson unravelled DNA's double helix structure starting with crystallographic evidence. Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin used it to help decipher the structure of pepsin, insulin, vitamin B12 and then penicillin. As well as the year of family farming, 2014 has been deemed to be International Year of Crystallography. Few will notice either. But crystallographers see with greater precision than crystal-ball gazers, and channel energy more efficiently than crystal therapists.