crystallography

American  

[kris-tl-og-ruh-fee] / ˌkrɪs tlˈɒg rə fi /

noun

1. the science dealing with crystallization and the forms and structure of crystals.

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crystallography British  

/ ˌkrɪstəˈlɒɡrəfɪ, ˌkrɪstələʊˈɡræfɪk /

noun

1. the science concerned with the formation, properties, and structure of crystals

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Other Word Forms

• crystallographer noun
• crystallographic adjective
• crystallographically adverb

Etymology

Origin of crystallography

First recorded in 1795–1805; crystallo- + -graphy

Example Sentences

The team used advanced structural biology methods including X-ray crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy.

From Science Daily • Mar. 14, 2026

It was certainly true his book could be unkind and gossipy, but that was why the public, which likely had trouble sorting out the details of crystallography and hydrogen bonds, loved it.

From Los Angeles Times • Nov. 7, 2025

By X-ray crystallography, using synchrotron radiation, they determined the 3D structure of the enzyme, which had to be crystallized beforehand, with and without 2-oxoglutarate attached to it.

From Science Daily • Jan. 22, 2024

Many researchers expect cryo-EM will surpass x-ray crystallography in the number of new protein structures solved next year.

From Science Magazine • Nov. 26, 2023

For almost forty years Bragg, a Nobel Prize winner and one of the founders of crystallography, had been watching X-ray diffraction methods solve structures of ever-increasing difficulty.*

From "Double Helix" by James D. Watson