Tne physical properties of crystals are defined by relations between measurable quantities. Density, for example, is defined from a relation between mass and volume. Now both mass and volume may be measured without reference to direction, and, accordingly, density is a property that does not depend on direction. On the other hand, a crystal property such as electrical conductivity is defined as a relation between two measurable quantities (the electric field and the current density) both of which have to be specified in direction as well as in magnitude.

This book is the outgrowth of a graduate-level “Special Topics in Structural chemistry and Symmetry Course” taught concurrently in Hebrew at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, and in English at the Feinberg Graduate School, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel. One educational goal of the course was to expose the participants to a path toward stereochemical knowledge different than the one ordinarily presented in standard organic stereochemistry lectures.

Nearly every mineralogy, metallurgy, chemistry, and physics textbook now contains a short section on crystallography. These abbreviated treatments can hardly be expected to present more than some of the conclusions of the science. Something was plainly needed to explain the reasoning leading to these conclusions. This book was written to supply a fuller account of the subject.

International Tables for Crystallography, Volume F, Crystallography of Biological Macromolecules, was commissioned by the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr) in recognition of the extraordinary contributions that knowledge of macromolecular structure has made, and will make, to the analysis of biological systems, from enzyme catalysis to the workings of a whole cell.

We are all familiar with the subdivision of the natural world into the plant, animal, and mineral kingdoms. Of these the realm of minerals is the study and research area of mineralogy. A mineralogist uses the word mineral, however, in a much more restricted sense than prevails with common usage. If we examine a rock rather closely, we notice, for example, that a sandstone is composed of individual quartz grains.

В учебном пособии на современном уровне изложены основы кристаллографии. Пособие предназначено студентам – бакалаврам и магистрантам – физикам и радиофизикам, изучающим кристаллографию. Издание может также оказаться полезным студентам, аспирантам и научным сотрудникам технических специальностей, занимающихся проблемами структурных исследований материалов.

Учебное пособие предназначено для изучения специального курса студентами, обучающимися по программам высшего профессионального образования по направлению подготовки 011200.62 Физика.

Методические указания «Кристаллы, кристаллизация», предназначенные для обучающихся в академической магистратуре по направлению подготовки 04.04.01 Химия, относятся к дисциплине «Физическая химия твердого тела» и состоят из двух разделов. В первом разделе методических указаний изложены теоретические основы процессов кристаллизации, свойственные реальным кристаллам. 
Второй раздел составляют: лабораторные работы, вопросы для подготовки и список литературных источников, необходимый для выполнения и интерпретации эксперимента.
Методические указания дополнены приложениями, в которых представлены наглядные иллюстрации.

Whole industries currently rely on bulk-grown crystals of a variety of materials. These industries range from information technology, based on the ubiquitous silicon, through radiofrequency applications, using gallium arsenide, etc.,'to telecommunications and lighting, based on III-V compounds, to infrared imaging, based on cadmium mercury telluride, and to high-energy physics and medical imaging using scintillator materials. These materials are used either in the active mode, as for silicon, or in the passive mode where the bulk-grown material is used as a substrate on which to deposit a wide range of binary, ternary, quaternary, etc., compounds by several epitaxial growth processes.