alan lindsay mackay (on the occasion of his eightieth birthday)

ISSN 1087-6596, Glass Physics and Chemistry, 2006, Vol. 32, No. 6, p. 683. © Pleiades Publishing, Inc., 2006.Original Russian Text © V.Ya. Shevchenko, 2006, published in Fizika i Khimiya Stekla.

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Great people live among us. In time and space,humanity differently gives them their due and, the moreso, recognizes their activity. As a rule, in science andengineering, where there are rather objective criteria ofevaluation, it is possible to receive universal recogni-tion in one’s lifetime.

How is Alan Mackay remarkable? In my opinion,his main trait is a constant searching, that is, a searchfor basic scientific problems in the field of the structureof matter and their correct formulation. This requires aprofound level of scientific culture based on a true edu-cation.

Reading Mackay’s works, one remembers the long-forgotten term “natural philosophy.” I believed that, inthe modern world, one individual could not compre-hend the development of the natural sciences as a wholedue to the narrow specialization of research fields andthe breadth of the subject matter covered by research.However, Alan Mackay has been able to do this.

In one of his works, Mackay divided the communityof crystallographers into two parties: structuralists,who determine the structure of matter and the exact

spatial arrangement of atoms, and tool makers, whodevelop the techniques and methodology of structuralanalysis. “I do not belong to either of these parties,”Mackay remarked. He forms his own party.

In order to reject reproaches regarding a lack of thepractical skills of a crystallographer, Mackay in 1962constructed an icosahedral structure referred to as theMackay icosahedron—a polyhedron without which, atpresent, it is impossible to understand the structure of agreat number of objects. He was the first to note thelimitation of concepts of classical crystallography inmodern science, to predict the tremendous role ofgeometry in the development of structural notions ofnew objects, to pose the problem of information trans-fer in the synthesis of materials, and to formulate theinorganic gene problem. I could list dozens ofMackay’s ideas that have been generously sown in thefield of the science of Nature, but a whole issue of thisjournal would not suffice for this purpose. Five yearsago, on the occasion of Mackay’s seventy-fifth birth-day,

Structural Chemistry

published a special issuewith papers by Mackay’s followers. Unlike his greatteacher John Desmond Bernal, who created the schoolof Nobel Prize winners who discovered the structure ofDNA at Birkbeck College at the University of London,Alan Mackay created a world brotherhood of his disci-ples without any special effort.

It is an honor for me to be among the adepts ofMackay’s theory, because many of his ideas really man-ifest themselves in the nanoworld—the surprising andbeautiful world of nanoobjects, which excites the imag-ination and in which one touches and penetrates into theprimordial mysteries of Nature. I have no doubt that wewill observe many interesting phenomena and makemany discoveries together. I heartily congratulate AlanMackay and his wife Sheila and wish them many yearsof life, good health, and happiness.

V.Ya. Shevchenko

JUBILEESAND MEMORIAL DATES

Alan Lindsay Mackay (On the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday)

DOI:

10.1134/S1087659606060162

Alan Mackay (to the right) and Vladimir Shevchenko (to the left) near Mackay’s house in London (September 6, 2006).