Featuring excellent illustrations and homework problems throughout, the book is intended both for advanced undergraduate and graduate students who are learning the subject for the first time, as well as for those who have practical experience but seek a text summarizing the theory of diffraction and X-ray crystallography. X-Ray Crystallography is a well-balanced, thorough, and clearly written introduction to the most important and widely practiced technique to determine the arrangement of atoms in molecules and solids. Featuring excellent illustrations and homework problems throughout, the book is intended both for advanced undergraduate and graduate students who are learning the subject for the first time, as well as for those who have practical experience but seek a text summarizing the theory of diffraction and X-ray crystallography. It is organized into three parts: Part 1 deals with symmetry and space groups, Part 2 explains the physics of X rays and diffraction, and Part 3 examines the methods for solving and refining crystal structures. The discussion proceeds in a logical and clear fashion from the fundamentals through to advanced topics such as disorder, twinning, microfocus sources, low energy electron diffraction, charge flipping, protein crystallography, the maximum likelihood method of refinement, and powder, neutron, and electron diffraction. The author’s clear writing style and distinctive approach is well suited for chemists, biologists, materials scientists, physicists, and scientists from related disciplines. A detailed Instructor’s Manual is available for adopting professors. "Girolami, an expert in the area, understands key issues of crystallography from the standpoint of a practicing chemist. He communicates in a crisp style. I found his presentation of the topic to be clear and interesting, and would use this text as part of a course in chemical crystallography for advanced undergrads and beginning grad students." --Professor Eric Schelter, University of Pennsylvania "I wish to congratulate the author on an excellent book, this is something that has been sorely missed. I have used several books over the years, but this one has exactly the right level, and the exercises are very useful as well." --Jacob Overgaard, Aarhus University "This is a very readable text, and generally very well written with good coverage and many excellent exercises. I particularly liked the chapters on symmetry and direct methods." --Dr. Marvin L. Hackert, The University of Texas at Austin "This text is very comprehensive, giving history, the never-changing basics of symmetry and diffraction, but also modern insights into synchrotron techniques etc. The number of illustrations and examples is wonderful, and I very much appreciate that this book does not shy away from the vector math necessary to show the properties of scattering and reciprocal space!" --Cora Lind-Kovacs, University of Toledo Gregory S. Girolami is Professor of Chemistry and Chemistry Department Head at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received B.S. degrees both in chemistry and in physics from the University of Texas at Austin, and his Ph.D. degree in 1981 from the University of California at Berkeley. Thereafter, he was a NATO postdoctoral fellow at Imperial College of Sciences and Technology in London, England, with Nobel Laureate Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson. He joined the faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1983. His research emphasizes the synthesis of new inorganic and organometallic compounds and materials, investigations of their reactivity, and measurements and interpretations of their physical properties. As part of this work, he has extensively used X-ray crystallography, and has taught a course on this topic at the University of Illinois since 1997.