X-ray diffraction exposure of B-type DNA, commonly referred to as "Photo 51"
Image source for Photo print with black central circle on white background King's College London Archives (CC-BY-NC) Wollaston reputedly used the models on the below right in his lectures on crystallography, including one to the Royal Society in 1813 announcing his key ideas on the subject. The British chemist William Hyde Wollaston took the study of crystals to new levels of precision, developing specialist instruments to examine and measure structure. René Just Haüy studied the outward structure of crystalline mineral forms, producing models.
It was an 18th century French priest, however, who would lay the foundations of the modern study of crystals. Snowflakes, for example, fascinated some of the earliest scientific investigators of crystals, like Robert Hooke ( famous for his pioneering microscopic studies) and the astronomer Johannes Kepler. Gleaming with light and tantalising philosophers with their regular structure, crystals have always been at the centre of conversations about how the particles of the universe fit together. Hooke’s microscopic study of crystals in quartz, Plate VII from Micrographia.
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