The 21st Annual Conference of the German Crystallographic Society took place at the Technical University Bergakademie Freiberg, Germany from March 19th – 22nd, 2013. Over 350 participants found their way to snow-covered Freiberg, which was the venue for the traditional conference for the first time.
As a university city and a traditional center of mining Freiberg offers an adequate setting for this conference. The TU Bergakademie Freiberg is renowned worldwide as the oldest mining university celebrating its 250th anniversary in 2015.
In materials science the TU Bergakademie Freiberg is in the unique position to be able to cover the complete innovation chain starting with the disciplines mineralogy and crystallography via solid-state physics and chemistry all the way to materials science and engineering.
For the first time in its history the Annual Conference of the German Crystallographic Society also was organized under a particular motto: “From Symmetry to Function”. In line with this motto the scope of this 21st annual meeting in Freiberg was to cover the whole innovation chain from fundamental research via applied crystallography science to application. Accordingly plenary speakers representing relevant fields of modern crystallography were invited:
Professor Peter van Aken
Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Stuttgart (GER)
Professor Claudia Felser
Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids, Dresden (GER)
Professor Václav Holý
Department of Condensed Matter Physics
Charles University in Prague (CZ)
Professor Rüdiger Kniep
Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids, Dresden (GER)
Professor Keith Moffat
Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics
University of Chicago (USA)
Professor Susan Schorr
Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie, Berlin (GER)
Professor Dan Shechtman
Department of Materials Science & Engineering
Technion, Haifa (IL).
Professor Dan Shechtman, who received the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2011, held a public lecture on Tuesday, 19th of March 2013, about his journey from the discovery of quasicrystals in the 1980's to the acknowledgement of his findings and being awarded the Nobel Prize in 2011. Over 500 people, members of the German Crystallographic Society, students and employees of the TU Bergakademie Freiberg – Institute for Experimental Physics, Freiberg, Germany, as well as members of the general public visited the lecture of this extraordinary scientist. The venue for this lecture was Alte Mensa in the center of Freiberg. Chairpersons were Professor Wolfgang Schmahl, the current president of the German Crystallographic Society and Professor Dr. Dirk C. Meyer, Conference Chair of the 21st Annual Conference of the German Crystallographic Society and director of the Institute for Experimental Physics at TU Bergakademie Freiberg.
The other speakers mentioned above held their 90-minutes lectures in the Audimax in the middle of the campus of TU Bergakademie Freiberg. Chairperson was, among others, Professor Wolfgang Neumann, former president of the German Crystallographic Society as well as other members of the Society.
In diverse sessions with more than 120 lectures every aspect of crystallography was discussed. These 15-minutes lectures were organized into 12 topics:
“Non-ambient Conditions – Pressure, Temperature and Fields at Work”
“General Crystallography – Modelling and Analysis Bridging the Scales”
“Aperiodic and Modulated Structures – Potential in Higher Dimensions”
“Crystallography in Materials Science – Real Structures”
“Spectroscopy and other Tools for Analysis”
“Along the Innovation Chain – from Minerals and Crystals via Natural Sciences to Functional Materials”
“Biocrystallography – Synthesis, Structure and Function”
“Crystal Physics, Crystal Chemistry – Synthesis and New Crystal Structures”
“Crystallography – History, Art, Cultural Heritage, Teaching and Public Communication”
“Biocrystallography – Biomimetic Materials, Drug Design, Processes and Functions”
“Materials for Electronics – Energy and Data Storage through the Eyes of Crystallographers”
“Biocrystallography – Others.”
In addition to the oral presentations the conference comprised poster sessions. The best six posters out of around 150 posters were awarded, and the poster prices were sponsored by Jena Bioscience GmbH and Oldenbourg Verlag. Beside the plenary talks and poster exhibition the 21st Annual Conference of the German Crystallographic Society offered its participants various opportunities to learn more about the latest research results and interact with experts and other attendees. The Young Crystallographers' symposium underlined the wish of the German Crystallographic Society to attract the young generation of crystallographers by supporting them in defining their own research platform and establishing an interactive network for the young members. A new working group was founded for that reason and the e-learning center of the TU Bergakademie Freiberg introduced possible tools to the young researchers for organizing their own web-based networks.
Additionally, a special industrial symposium invited participants the opportunity to gain insight into commercial aspects of crystallography. Directors of two global companies which produce semiconductor wafers at their local sites in Freiberg presented the companies' profiles and gave an impression of the challenges of today's market.
Various extracurricular activities were also part of the program. Some of the participants booked a tour down to the “Reiche Zeche” mining shaft, while others visited the mineralogical exhibition “Terra Mineralia” or the premises of local manufacturing companies working in the field of crystallography.
Within the scope of the conference some awards were presented to scientists. This year's Max-von-Laue-Award was given to Dr. Lkhamsuren Bayarjargal of the Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, for creating diamonds from calcite. The Will-Kleber-Medallion for outstanding scientific reviews was awarded to Professor Dr. Helmut Klapper, Bonn University, Germany, and the Carl-Hermann-Medallion for outstanding scientific life work was given to Professor Dr. Emil Mackovicky of the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
On the last day of the conference, the 22nd March 2013, a bronze sheet was unveilled at the entrance of castle Freudenstein in Freiberg. This ceremonious event marked the closing of a successful conference.
The bronze sheet (Figure 1) commemorates the discovery of two elements Indium and Germanium by Clemens Winkler, Ferdinand Reich and Hieronymus Theodor Richter in 1863 and 1886 while they were researching at the TU Bergakademie Freiberg. Being a central place within Freiberg, the installation in front of the entrance of castle Freudenstein symbolizes the importance of these two elements for the semiconductor industry in Freiberg.
Bronze sheet that commemorates the discovery of two elements Indium and Germanium by Clemens Winkler, Ferdinand Reich and Hieronymus Theodor Richter in 1863 and 1886.
The participants of this recent conference are invited also to attend the 22nd Annual Conference of the German Crystallographic Society which will take place in Berlin in March 2014.
