Carolina Henriette Mac Gillavry

Carolina Henriette Mac Gillavry (Amsterdam, January 22 1904 - Amsterdam, May 9 1993) was a Dutch chemist and crystallographer. She is known for her discoveries on the use of diffraction in crystallography.

Short Biography

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Mac Gillavry was born in an intellectual family (her father was a brain surgeon, her mother a teacher). She was the second of six children. In 1921 she began a study in chemistry at the University of Amsterdam, where she became interested in the (then) new field of quantum mechanics. In 1932 she finished her studies and became the assistant of the chemist A. Smits. She became a friend of J.H. Bijvoet, who interested her in crystallography. In 1937 she wrote her PhD thesis on the subject. She then became assistant of A.E. van Arkel at Leiden, but Bijvoet asked her to come back to the Amsterdam crystallography laboratory that same year. Together with Bijvoet she did research in electromagnetic diffraction and its use in crystallography. She also did research in inorganic chemistry.

After the second world war she was one of the developers of direct methods, a new way of calculus that could be used in crystallography. The method uses the Harker Kasper inequility, that was first published in 1948 by crystallographers D. Harker and J.S. Kasper. Because of her work on Harker Kasper inequilities she became an international authority on the subject. In 1948 she worked with R. Pepinsky in Auburn, Alabama, for a year. The Dutch company Philips also got interested in her work on the chemistry of solids. She became a professor at the University of Amsterdam in 1957, where she used her international contacts for the benefit of her students.

In the English speaking world Mac Gillavry became most famous for her book Symmetry aspects of M.C. Escher's periodic drawings on the works of M.C. Escher. The book was instrumental in drawing international attention to the artist as well. Mac Gillavry married the oto-rhino-larynologist J.H. Nieuwenhuizen in 1968. In 1972 she retired.