caption death_date birth_place image_size nationality field birth_date known_for doctoral_students prizes article_title name
paul niggli january 13 , 1953 zofingen 150px swiss crystallographer june 26 , 1888 x-ray crystallography fritz laves marcel 1947 -rrb- benoist prize -lrb- 1929 -rrb- roebling medal -lrb- paul niggli
 paul niggli
paul niggli

paul niggli -lrb- june 26 , 1888 -- january 13 , 1953 -rrb- was a swiss crystallographer who was a leader in the field of x-ray crystallography .
niggli was born in zofingen and studied at the swiss federal institute of technology -lrb- eth -rrb- in zurich and the university of zurich , where he obtained a doctorate .
his 1919 book , `` geometrische kristallographie des diskontinuums '' , played a seminal role in the refinement of space group theory .
in this book , niggli demonstrated that although x-ray reflection conditions do not always uniquely determine the space group to which a crystal belongs , they do reveal a small number of possible space groups to which it could belong .
niggli used morphological methods to account for internal structure and , in his 1928 `` kristallographische und strukturtheoretische grundbegriffe , '' he took up what is essentially the reverse process , the task of establishing the connection between space lattices and external crystal morphology .
the great aim of his life was to integrate the whole field of earth sciences .
in 1920 , niggli became the lead scientist at the eth 's `` institut für mineralogie und petrographie '' , where he brought his systematic approach to the study of crystal morphologies using x-ray diffraction .
in 1935 , niggli and his doctoral student werner nowacki -lrb- 1909 -- 1988 -rrb- determined the 73 three-dimensional arithmetic crystal classes -lrb- symmorphic space groups -rrb- .
niggli retired from the institute in 1949 .
he was also professor of mineralogy at the eidgenössische technische hochschule and at the university of zurich .
niggli succeeded paul heinrich von groth -lrb- 1843 - 1927 -rrb- as editor of `` zeitschrift für kristallographie '' .
in 1948 , niggli was awarded the roebling medal of the mineralogical society of america .
the paul niggli foundation awards medals to outstanding swiss mineral scientists below the age of 35 with a strong perspective for an academic career .
dorsum niggli on the moon was named after him .
