If you’re like me, you likely have only the bare minimum of an idea as to just what crystallography is. “Something to do with crystals” is just about the sum total of my own present understanding of it.
However I also have gathered that it is the underlying field of study that has made an astonishing number of discoveries in chemistry, biology, and physics possible. In other words, it’s something of which anyone who would consider him or herself scientifically literate today should have at least a basic understanding.
And for the acquisition of such an understanding, the recently published Crystallography; A Very Short Introduction by A. M. Glazer is just the right book to read. Explaining in 144 pages just what crystallography is, how it originated and developed, and in what fields it has been put to use, this new VSI volume superbly embodies the purpose of the Very Short Introductions series.
