Welcome to the History Portal of the American Crystallographic Association

Joel L. Bernstein’s Living History is now online. He was born in Brooklyn and spent the most of his career in NJ. From 1962-1980 he worked at Bell Telephone Laboratories as a crystallographer. Together, he and Sidney Abrahams designed and built one of the first automatic diffractometers for automated X-ray data collection. (See the historically valuable video contrasting precession camera data collection with the automated instrument here.) Later Joel worked in marketing for several telephone companies. Finally, as an independent consultant his specialty was telecommunications for international companies.  

Joel Bernstein was born in Cleveland but most of his career was at the Department of Chemistry, Ben-Gurian University. There he studied structure-property relationships in organic conducting materials, hydrogen-bonding patterns, crystal engineering, and polymorphism. His book Polymorphism in Molecular Crystals (2002) is a classic in the field. His career is summarized in his obituary, now online.

Carroll K. Johnson received the 1997 Martin Buerger Award from the ACA for his work on thermal ellipsoid analysis and his well-known computer program ORTEP (Oak Ridge Thermal-Ellipsoid Plot Program). ORTEP enabled crystallographers to display a crystal structure in three dimensions and to show the extent of thermal vibration of the atoms. A beautiful video remembering his career and his lively personality is now online here.

John Westbrook’s work as a data specialist has benefitted crystallography in important ways. He was instrumental in designing mmCIF, a specification for bimolecular X-ray data submissions so that the records are uniform and readable. The dictionary he developed was used first for the Nucleic Acid Database and now forms the basis for the database at the Protein Data Bank. John's recent work extended the dictionary to encompass NMR, cryo-electron microscopy, and XFEL. Through his efforts users of the PDB have access to a wealth of structural experimental data. His obituary is now online here.

Videos of the 2021 Transactions of the ACA are now online. The two days of excellent presentations celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Protein Data Bank and included both laboratory and computational research achievements related to the PDB. As part of the Symposium, the Plenary Lecture was given by Frances H. Arnold, winner of the 2018 Nobel Prize in chemistry. She described her ground-breaking mutation experiments to direct the evolution of proteins in vitro to catalyze new reactions.

The oral interview with Bill Duax, former CEO of ACA 1986-2019, begins with highlights of his early life growing up in Illinois in a family of beekeepers. His research at the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute (HWI) emphasized the structure of steroids and patterns of steroid interactions with receptors. Over more than 30 years he oversaw the substantial changes in our professional organization while conducting research at HWI. He closes with a summary of his current activities. Altogether, a fascinating insight into the achievements and personality of one who has made a huge contribution to the ACA.

Elizabeth (Betty) Wood is described by Margaret Schott in her video lecture at the Morven Museum & Garden as a “Renaissance woman.” She was the first woman scientist at Bell Labs. Trained as a geologist, she collaborated with Bell scientists in the study of quartz crystals and other piezoelectric materials. She was president of the ACA in 1957. She authored several books, including Crystals and Light: An Introduction to Optical Crystallography, and Science from Your Airplane Window.

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