Ha, everyone seems to be bragging about how far back cryo- crystallography really goes. In that vain, I'd like to mention that, in Martinsried, we had a room that was lined with insulated steel walls and that could be flushed with liquid nitrogen. It was requested (demanded, really...) by Robert Huber when the Max-Planck Institute was finalized in 1972 (I hope I got my history right). That room contained an entire diffraction system. Talk about crystal cooling... bah, way too dinky. Cool the entire room! Of course, it was a hazard to work in that room, and so - as far as I know - there was only one post-doc from India how ever used it. That room had an ante-room with two more generators plus detectors that could be cooled down to -20°C! Ah, the good old Wild West times of macromolecular crystallography...

Cheers - MM



On Jun 19, 2008, at 11:48 AM, Pietro Roversi wrote:

Well everyone, talking of early applications of cryocooling to X-ray
crystallography, what about Sten Samson's marvellous helium cryostat
which was operational at Caltech since the end of the 1970s and used to
reach temperatures around 20 K routinely ...., see for example:

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1982 Jul;79(13):4040-4.
Structure of a B-DNA dodecamer at 16 K.
Drew HR, Samson S, Dickerson RE.

That instrument (and its twin) are now both with Riccardo Destro in
Milano.

        Ciao!

        Pietro

        


--
Pietro Roversi
Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, Oxford University
South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3RE, England UK
Tel. 0044-1865-275385


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