Chemistry Labs

Photo credit: United States Office of Naval Research — Wikimedia Commons · Public domain

Jerome Karle

1918–2013 · United States · 20th century

Nobel Chemistry 1985

American physical chemist who pioneered direct methods for determining crystal structures.

Nobel Prize work

With Herbert Hauptman he developed 'direct methods' in X-ray crystallography, mathematical techniques that deduce atomic positions directly from diffraction intensities, making routine crystal-structure determination possible.

Fields

Physical chemistry

Related topics

Crystal structures, X-ray diffraction

A crystal is periodic order on the atomic scale. X-rays scattered by that periodic array interfere constructively only in specific directions, turning a diffraction pattern into evidence about the unit cell and atomic arrangement.

Chemists in the same field

Jens C. Skou (1918)Ilya Prigogine (1917)William N. Lipscomb (1919)George Porter (1920)Peter D. Mitchell (1920)Rudolph A. Marcus (1923)