Reflections on Crystallography

The world around us is filled with crystals and crystalline materials. As a species, we’ve long held a fascination with crystals whether its diamonds for their beauty or silicon for its importance in computing. Crystallography is a topic rich with history, Nobel prizes and capability. This blog intends to explore the many aspects of crystallography from the logistical to the scientific to the educational.

Posts by Fraser White

Fraser White

Fraser White began his career as a crystallographer under the tutelage of Professor Simon Parsons in the Chemistry department at the Univeristy of Edinburgh in 2004. Following completion of his PhD, he stayed at Edinburgh, accepting the position of staff crystallographer tasked with running the departmental X-ray crystallography service. During this time Fraser solved and refined over 1000 structures for a variety of different sample chemistries and gained broad experience in solving crystallographic problems. After several years in this role, Fraser first joined Agilent technologies in 2011 as an applications scientist based in Oxfordshire and remained with the company through the acquisition of Agilent’s single crystal business by Rigaku in 2015. Now in the role of product marketing manager for Rigaku Oxford Diffraction, Fraser is involved in the scientific aspects of single-crystal product marketing.

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Structural Science for Sustainability: How XtaLAB Synergy-ED Is Helping Researchers Solve Real Materials Problems

Oct 5, 2026

Sustainability matters because better environmental outcomes usually depend on better materials and better process understanding. At time of writing, the publication list contained 135 peer-reviewed ...

5 minute read

How the Rigaku School for Crystallography Was Born

Jul 21, 2026

Genesis Back in 2020, the world changed. At the start of the year, most of us had heard about COVID-19 but had little sense of what it would mean for daily life. China had just begun implementing ...

PDF Life science Crystallography Single crystal X-ray diffraction

4 minute read

What Changed—and What’s Next—in Diffractometer Performance

Mar 3, 2026

8 minute read

A Global Guide to Securing an XtaLAB Synergy-ED

Mar 3, 2026

In laboratories across the world, researchers’ ideas are limited by their access to cutting-edge instrumentation. Modern science pushes the boundaries of possibility more than ever before and the ...

8 minute read