ABSTRACT
If there is a future International Year of Crystallography, and ‘why not?’ since our turn will surely come round again, let’s say at the bicentennial in 2112, what might we see then?
The databases are a reection of the state of crystal structure analysis and a health metric is the time period over which a doubling of their entries occurs. If we assume a doubling period of 10 years, then in 100 years from now, a theoretical 210 multiplication of entries would promise, if realized, an obviously amazing increase. In terms of the methods of macromolecular de novo crystal structure determination, the last 20 years researchers have veered away from multiple isomorphous replacements through multi-wavelength anomalous dispersion methods of phase determination to, today, molecular replacement being predominant. This trend seems set to continue. I continue to believe however in the vital importance of the use of resonant scattering in phase determination for macromolecules and for precise element identication in chemical crystallography (especially mixed metal sites) and in biological crystallography [1-3] whether using synchrotron radiation or in the newcomer on the block, the X-ray laser [4].
