In Celebration of the International Year of Crystallography

Len Barbour received the National Science and Technology Forum Award for research and its outputs over the past 5 years or less in 2007, and was inducted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa in 2008 for his contributions to science in South Africa.

Professor Barbour presented a colourful lecture on the discovery and characterisation of crystalline materials with unusual properties. In particular, he discussed the development of new approaches to in-situ analysis of gas-loaded porous materials by means of X-ray diffraction and calorimetry. Such studies have led to a molecular-level understanding of dynamic processes that occur in the crystalline solid state (e.g. flexible pores and pressure-induced phase transformations).