This book is published to celebrate the International Year of Crystallography 2014, as proclaimed by the United Nations. The year has been chosen as the International Year of Crystallography since it was 100 years ago that the first Nobel Prize was awarded for crystallographic observations to Max von Laue. Just a year later, Sir William Henry Bragg and William Lawrence Bragg, father and son, won their prize for showing the possibility of determining atomic positions in crystals. This book describes the lives and works of 33 Nobel Laureates starting with Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen (1901) and ending with Brian Kobilka (2012). It also reproduces the most important works of these scientists. The book gives a historical perspective of a scientific field that is important for our understanding of the atomic organization of the world around us, from inorganic materials to complex biological molecules, such as the ribosome.This book is a timely summary of the main developments in crystallography over the last 100 years. The central publications of 33 Nobel laureates are reproduced. There is no other book providing this selection of material.

Mentioned as the second prize category in his will, Chemistry was the most important science for Alfred Nobel's own work. The development of Nobel's inventions as well as the industrial processes he employed were based upon chemical knowledge. This volume is a collection of the Nobel lectures delivered by the Nobel laureates, together with their biographies and the presentation speeches for the period 2011-2015. Each Nobel lecture is based on the work for which the laureate was awarded the Nobel Prize.List of Nobel laureates and their award citations:(2011) 'for mechanistic studies of DNA repair'.