The year 2014 has been designated as the international year of crystallography celebrating the 100^<th> year of X-ray crystallography. In the early stage of the establishment of X-ray crystallography took part Dr. Torahiko Terada. His disciple, Dr. Shoji Nishikawa, has built up a systematic method for X-ray crystal structure analysis by the introduction of the space-group consideration. The method was exported to the United State when Nishikawa studied there, and contributed to the progression of the X-ray crystallography in the country. The X-ray crystallography in Japan, founded by Nishikawa was advanced in his laboratory of newly-established RIKEN at that time by a number of excellent researchers including Drs. Isamu Nitta and Seishi Kikuchi. Electron diffraction by crystals developed by Kikuchi waked the interest in the dynamical diffraction theory and phenomenon, which later led to the flowering of the X-ray dynamical diffraction required for the characterization of nearly perfect semiconductor crystals when the semiconductor industries were developed. The advancement of these researches always demanded more intense X-ray sources, which produced the rotating-anode X-ray generators, synchrotron radiation sources, and X-ray free-electron lasers.
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