Buerger, Martin Julian

▪ American crystallographer

born April 8, 1903, Detroit, Mich., U.S.

died Feb. 25, 1986

      American crystallographer who devised or improved many of the standard methods, techniques, and instruments of modern crystal-structure analysis.

      Upon receiving a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1929, Buerger was appointed to its faculty. He became institute professor in 1956 and emeritus in 1968. He was also named university professor (1968–73) by the University of Connecticut.

      Among the most important of Buerger's innovations is the precession method of X-ray diffraction analysis (the determination of the spatial arrangement of atoms in crystals by observing the pattern in which they scatter a beam of X rays), one of the two most commonly used methods of recording diffraction intensities.

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