To mark the centennial of the discovery that X-rays could be diffracted through crystalline material, the United Nations named 2014 the International Year of Crystallography. At Chemistry Central Journal we are celebrating this by running a thematic series on ‘Current Topics in Chemical Crystallography’ with our Editorial Board member and renowned crystallographer, Michael B. Hursthouse. Mike shares his thoughts on how the field has developed and highlights from the series.
It has been a great pleasure and privilege to compile, and act as Editor, for this Thematic. It has been assembled as a contribution to the celebration of 2014, The Unesco Year of Crystallography. Its timing is also special to me, since 2014 is also my 50th year as an independent researcher, having taken up my first 
postdoctoral appointment in 1964, in the laboratory of Professor Donald Rogers at Imperial College London. In my Editorial for the thematic, I have summarised how my own interests and career developed, and it is a truly satisfying feeling to know that my chosen field of study has been a wonderful experience throughout. For most of the time, there was a feeling of great camaraderie within the community. Only in the last few years have we seen the kind of rivalries spring up that were very common throughout all the other branches of chemistry!
In the early days, most of us were determining structures in order to define the molecules or ions that made up the crystals, but now chemical crystallographers operate in a multitude of special areas, which have developed over the years. These have benefitted from the invention and introduction of many new procedures and techniques, and many are now almost stand-alone topics. These can be identified by the number of focussed meetings, summer schools and specified sections at National and International Meetings on Crystallography.
This year has also seen many journal collections in some of these topics, and recognising this, it was my intention to run this thematic issue for Chemistry Central Journal in a way that could demonstrate the broader scope of the subject. Accordingly, we have assembled a small group of invited papers that will describe studies covering the interplay between molecular and crystal structures on grinding or at high pressure and the structures of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), together with demonstrations of the high level of achievement in the calculation of molecular and intermolecular electron distributions and energies, either through charge density studies or ab-initio calculations. We also will have a paper which discusses strategies for structure solution and refinement of very large structures. One of the two papers from my group also presents some thoughts on how we may describe hydrogen-bonded networks, to enable identification of similarities and differences.
I hope readers will find all the papers interesting, and be inspired to contribute further papers, of any format, if they have some innovative or interesting results that can add further dimensions to the collection. Please e-mail me if you wish to consider this. My contact details can be found within my manuscripts.
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