Martin Julian Buerger
Life
Buerger grew up in New York City and studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). First, he wanted to be a mining engineer, but also studied mineralogy and geology, and in 1929 received his doctorate in mineralogy. After that, he was an assistant professor at MIT, where he served as second professor ever reached the highest level of the Institute Professor in 1956 and Director of the School of Advanced Studies at MIT was. In 1968 he was at MIT in the partial retirement and was appointed professor of geology at the University of Connecticut until 1973.
Buerger was a dominant figure in crystallography and specifically in the X-ray crystallography in the United States. His interest awakened by lectures of William Lawrence Bragg at MIT in 1927, after which he began to develop their own equipment and to build, mainly because he lacked the money for the purchase. His textbooks were regarded as standard works. He defined many crystal structures and dealt with polymorphism and twinning in crystals.
In 1945, he became the first president of the Crystallographic Society ( from 1947 Crystallographic Society of America ). In 1943 he was the president of the American Society for X - ray and electron diffraction, which was founded in 1941. In 1947 he was president of the Mineralogical Society of America.
In 1953 he became a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences. He was a member of the Austrian and Bavarian Academies of Sciences, the Accademia dei Lincei and the Academy in Turin. He was from the beginning actively in the management of the International Union of Crystallography and from its formation from 1948 to 1981 Member of the Commission on International Tables. He was involved in the International Tables for X -ray Crystallography and the International Tables for Crystallography (for example, in the new version 1985).
Writings
- X -ray crystallography, Wiley, Chapman and Hall, 1942 ( reprint Warrior 1980)
- Crystal structure analysis, Wiley 1960 ( reprint Warrior 1980)
- The precession method in x -ray crystallography, Wiley 1964
- With Leonid Azaroff: The powder method in x -ray crystallography, McGraw Hill 1958
- Vector space, and its application in crystal- structure investigation, Wiley 1959
- Contemporary Crystallography, McGraw Hill 1970
- Elementary crystallography; an introduction to the fundamental geometrical features of crystals, Wiley 1956
- Introduction to crystal geometry, McGraw Hill 1971
- Crystallography - An Introduction to the geometric and X-ray crystallography, De Gruyter 1977