American Crystallographic Association

About This Association

The American Crystallographic Association began life on January 1, 1950. It held its first meeting on April 10-12 of that year at Pennsylvania State College in State College, Pennsylvania. Today*, a little over a quarter of a century later the society holds its 25th meeting in the same locality, to find that the place is called University Park, the home of Pennsylvania State University. Six years after its first meeting the origin of the ACA was outlined by William Parrish and Betty Wood in Volume IV of the Norelco Reporter. There it is recorded that the ACA is the successor of the American Society of X-Ray and Electron Diffraction and the Crystallographic Society of America. These two societies, in turn, had begun their lives as the second world war was beginning to disturb the world. Two separate groups had begun to raise the question of the usefulness of establishing a journal for crystallographic research and this eventually stimulated the formation of the Inter­ national Union of Crystallography which then not only took over the International Tables for X-ray Crystallography, but a short time later established Acta Crystallographica.Few of you here recall the birth of the ACA, and even fewer remember the origins and acts of the two societies which eventually merged to become the ACA. It seemed useful, then, while there are a few left who took part in the acts which led to our beginning, to briefly outline the history on this occasion.

Publications

Conventions

Annual

Specialties:

1. Science

Information Summary