Dick Dickerson tried to do the same thing at Caltech around the same time. The major problem with cooling equipment was that the Picker goniometer had lots of metal in it, and each of the metal pieces cooled and contracted differently, so the alignment was always off. Nice idea, but not useful. That's when they got the idea to just cool the sample.
Yes, Sten Samson's device was elegant in a number of ways, and we could collect 16-20K data for weeks on it. Bernie Santarsiero On Thu, June 19, 2008 12:04 pm, Mischa Machius wrote: > 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 > > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Mischa Machius, PhD > Associate Professor > Department of Biochemistry > UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas > 5323 Harry Hines Blvd.; ND10.214A > Dallas, TX 75390-8816; U.S.A. > Tel: +1 214 645 6381 > Fax: +1 214 645 6353 >
