Welcome to our new cohort of Part II students for 2014/15: Felix Easton-Smith, Sophie Gearing and Charlotte Kirk.
Sep 242014
Aug 182014
The Chemistry Between Them, a new play by Adam Ganz will be first broadcast on Radio 4 on Wednesday 20th August at 14:15. The play examines the life-long friendship between Nobel Prize winning crystallographer Professor Dorothy Hodgkin and her former student (and Chem. Cryst. alumna) Margaret Thatcher. Despite their extremely different political viewpoints, the pair corresponded regularly. The events in the play are set during a visit by Dorothy to Chequers in 1983 during which she is pushing the case for nuclear disarmament.
Guardian Article: Margaret Thatcher’s Surprising Relationship with Dorothy Hodgkin
Radio 4 website: The Chemistry Between Them
Thatcher, c. 1938 (CC-BY4.0)
Hodgkin
Aug 172014
The CRYSTALS v1461 installer is now available.
There are still some usability issues in this release. v1462 is expected soon (October 1st).
This is a bugfix release. It fixes the following problems in v1460: a crash on loading large datasets; line-ending issues with the new built-in editor; freeze in Cameron; display issues with atom labels in CRYSTALS.
Version 1460 and this release are built with a new compiler and libraries – therefore please report any installation or usage problems.
Changes
See v1460 release for changes.
Aug 172014
The triennial congress of the International Union of Crystallography was held in Montreal over 8 days in August 2014.
Contributions to the meeting from Chem. Cryst. staff and students included:
Richard I. Cooper and James A. Arnold:
Displacement Parameter Restraints for Dealing with Limited Data
Karim J. Sutton, Pascal Parois and Richard I Cooper:
Big Methods for Small Molecules
Jerome G. P. Wicker and Richard I. Cooper
Predicting crystallisation propensity of small molecules
Pascal Parois and Richard I. Cooper
Effective data collection and refinement of perturbed structures
Richard Cooper and Lukas Palatinus co-chaired a session on “New Techniques for Structure Solution and Refinement”
Material from Oxford Chemistry’s Crystals at the Garden exhibition held earlier this year was displayed as part of a public International Year of Crystallography exhibition which ran alongside the main meeting.
A screening of Georgina Ferry’s play “Hidden Glory: Dorothy Hodgkin in her own words” was organized during the meeting, supported by Oxford Chemistry, Somerville College, and the British Crystallographic Association. It was well attended by meeting delegates including some of Dorothy’s former students.
Aug 042014
This version has been superseded by v1461.
The CRYSTALS v1460 installer is now available.
This release is built with a new compiler and libraries – therefore please report any installation or usage problems should they occur.
Changes
Pascal has significantly improved speed and precision of least squares refinement.
Improvements to Hooft / Parsons parameter calculations.
Options to standardise position in cell close to 1/2 1/2 1/2
Ability to restrain just NH,OH or all-H atoms (as recommended by CheckCIF).
Fix ‘Open Crystals Here’ context menu link on Windows 7 & 8: right-click on a folder, or on the background of the current folder.
Histogram of systematic absence values added to analyses window
Many small fixes to diffractometer import software
Scripts by Markus Neuburger to automatically refine occupancies of disordered parts.
Improved support for importing SHELX res files
Cell esd calculation in CIF fixed to agree with Platon method.
Added internal editor for editing constraints, restraints, etc.
Fix generation of space group operators from non-standard monoclinic groups F2/d, B2/d, B21/d and related symbols.
Many other bug fixes and tweaks.
Jun 302014
The sixth X-ray diffraction school organised by Universite de Lorraine and CNRS will be held in early July at the Abbaye des Prémontrés Pont à Mousson, France. The historical setting on the banks of the Moselle River is the backdrop for an intensive week of crystallography. Richard Cooper will lecture on “Affinement de structures cristallines” and engage the audience with some “Travaux Practiques” using the CRYSTALS refinement package.
Jun 172014
Congratulations to Karim Sutton, Jerome Wicker and Rajiv Gogna from Chem Cryst, together with some guy from engineering, for making it to the finals of the 2014 University inter-college croquet tournament. This is a truly ridiculous feat and we wish them the best of luck next year!
Rajiv lines up for a hoop
Jun 112014
As part of the Crystals at the Garden exhibition, on Wednesday 25th June there will be a screening of the film of Georgina Ferry’s play “Hidden Glory: Dorothy Hodgkin in her own words” staring Miranda Cook. The screening will be followed by a guided tour of the exhibition and Botanic Gardens led by researchers from the Department of Chemistry.
Date: Wednesday 25th June 2014 from 5.30 – 8pm
Jun 072014
On June 7th 2014 the first of an irregular series of crystallography five-a-side grudge matches took place: Chem Cryst’s “Co-crystal Palace” stormed to victory over the Goodwin Group’s “Real Space Madrid”.
l-r: Mark “Wozza’ Warren, Karim Sutton, Jerome Q Wicker, Richard ‘Scooby’ Cooper, Rajiv Gogna and Sam Joyner
Jun 022014
An exhibition is running at the University of Oxford Botanic Garden throughout June and includes crystals, lab equipment, and stories of cutting edge and historical science from the Department of Chemistry and the Chemical Crystallography group.
Open until June 27th 2014 – all ages welcome. Free with admission to the Garden (admission is free for Oxford students and staff, children are free with an adult – see the Botanic Garden website for more information). The exhibition is open during normal Botanic Garden opening hours 9am – 6pm (last entry 5.15pm).