Fifty Years of X-Ray Diffraction
(720 pp)
Edited by P. P. Ewald
Published July 1962
© International Union of
Crystallography
VI. Schools and Regional Development
CHAPTER 17
British and Commonwealth Schools of Crystallography
17.2. Crystallography in Britain during and after
World War II
by J. D. Bernal
POST - WAR PERIOD, 1946-1962
Birkbeck College. (p. 388)
J. D. Bernal came to occupy the Physics Chair at Birkbeck College too
shortly before the war for it to have had much effect at the time. The
physical destruction of the college in the London raids resulted in a delay in
setting up work again after the war. However, by 1947 a new school of
crystallography had definitely been established in some ruined houses and was
being gradually expanded in the years that followed. Postgraduate classes in
Crystallography were started in Birkbeck in 1949 on a London intercollegiate
basis. In research Birkbeck took over effectively part of the work of the
Cambridge school with one important addition. Thanks to a grant from the
Nuffield Foundation it was possible to set up a biomolecular unit concentrating
largely on the structure of proteins and viruses.
Other organic structures were studied such as those of terpenes.
More important, however, was the study of pyrimidene by Parry
and of the nucleoside, cytosine, by the Norwegian research worker,
Furberg, who was able to show that the planes of the pyrimidene
molecules were arranged at right angles to the rings of the pentose
sugars. This provided the essential clue for the idea of a helical
structure of nucleic acid.
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