The Development of X-ray Analysis

Lawrence Bragg (eds D C Phillips and H Lipson) London: G Bell 1975 pp viii + 270 price £6.50 Sir Lawrence Bragg had the ‘brain-wave’ which showed how the x-ray diffraction pattern of a substance could be used to deduce its structure in the autumn of 1912, when he had just graduated in Cambridge. By the time of his death in 1971, he had seen x-ray analysis applied to substances of ever increasing complexity, culminating in the protein haemoglobin of molecular weight 64 500 and with the promise of revealing still more complex biological structures.