ELFT HÍRADÓ

["Gyula Faigel" <gf AT szfki.hu>]

We cordially invite you to participate in the Virtual Press Conference "What 
crystallography can do for you" on Thursday 12 December, 13:00hrs GMT 
(14:00hrs CET, 08:00hrs EST).

The Press Conference will feature the first public screening of the video to 
launch the International Year of Crystallography 2014, proclaimed by the 
United Nations General Assembly.

Short messages from the UNESCO Director General, Ms Irina Bokova, the 
President of the International Union of Crystallography, Prof. Gautam R. 
Desiraju, and Ms Georgina Ferry, science writer, broadcaster, and author of 
biographies, shall highlight the benefits of crystallography to mankind, and 
how it continues to improve the quality of life for all, through the 
discovery of new medicines and drugs to novel materials.

Professor Mike Glazer, Emeritus Professor Jesus College Oxford, will be 
available for a Q&A session, and a unique download area will provide 
articles, images, transcripts of messages, and other related media material.

Crystallography is the discipline that studies the structure of matter; it 
aims to describe how atoms are connected in molecules and all materials, thus 
helping to decipher their properties and behaviour.

“It is structure that we look for whenever we try to understand anything. All 
science is built upon this search; we investigate how the cell is built of 
reticular material, cytoplasm, chromosomes; how crystals aggregate; how atoms 
are fastened together; how electrons constitute a chemical bond between 
atoms. We like to understand, and to explain, observed facts in terms of 
structure.” Linus Pauling, ‘The Place of Chemistry in the Integration of the 
Sciences’, Main Currents in Modern Thought (1950), 7, 110.

To participate in the virtual press conference "What crystallography can do 
for you", please register at: 
http://mediazone.brighttalk.com/event/BrightTALK/f2fb9d75af-8175-intro

We look forward to welcoming you on 12 December 2013.

Best wishes



Michele Zema

Project Manager for IYCr2014

mz AT iucr.org







Biographies



Gautam R. Desiraju (Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India) is a 
structural chemist who has played a major role in the development and growth 
of crystal engineering. He has authored around 375 publications and been 
recognized by awards such as the Alexander von Humboldt Forschungspreis and 
the TWAS (Third World Academy of Sciences) Prize in Chemistry. He was elected 
President of the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr) for the 
triennium 2011-2014, and is one of the Main Editors of IUCrJ, the IUCr’s new 
open-access journal.

Irina Bokova has been the Director-General of UNESCO since 15 November 2009 
and is the first woman to have been elected head of the Organization. As an 
active member of many international expert networks and of civil society and, 
in particular, as Chairperson and founding member of the European Policy 
Forum, she has worked to overcome European divisions and to foster the values 
of dialogue, diversity, human dignity and human rights. 

Georgina Ferry is a science writer and broadcaster based in Oxford, UK. She 
is the author of biographies including Dorothy Hodgkin: A Life (Granta, 1998) 
and Max Perutz and the Secret of Life (Chatto, 2007). For Hodgkin’s centenary 
in 2010 she wrote and produced a one-woman play, Hidden Glory, based on the 
scientist’s writings.

Mike Glazer (Visiting Professor, U. Warwick; Emeritus Professor of Physics, 
U. Oxford, UK) became interested in crystals at the age of seven, when he 
found his first natural mineral. This early interest eventually took him into 
the field of crystallography. Since then, he has established a reputation for 
his work on the crystallography of technologically useful crystals and for 
co-inventing a method to cool small crystals in an open stream.



Jonathan Agbenyega is the Business Development Manager at IUCr, Chester, UK. 
Jonathan completed his PhD in Materials Science at the University of 
Southampton in 1993 and also co-authored a book on Raman Spectroscopy 
published by Wiley during this period. After a brief postdoc position at the 
Institute of Food Research, Norwich, UK, Jonathan began his career in 
scientific publishing. Jonathan has worked with leading publishers Wiley, 
Pearson, and more recently Elsevier where he was Editor in Chief and 
Publisher of Materials Today magazine.