As a graduate student in mineralogy at MIT in the late 1920s, Martin Buerger (SB 1925, SM 1927, PhD 1929) became interested how the structure of a crystal changed its properties. While he was a professor in the MIT Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, he was a pioneer in using x-ray photography to determine the structure of minerals.

He used the new technique of x-ray diffraction (looking at the patterns made by bouncing x-rays off a crystal) to study the arrangements of atoms in crystals. He built his own equipment from the designs proposed in scientific journals, sometimes even before the original authors had finished their own versions. He also invented new instruments for making accurate ball-and-stick models of the molecular makeup he determined through x-ray crystallography. The author of over 250 technical papers and the classic textbook on crystallography, Buerger became the best-known American crystallographer, the founding president of the Crystallographic Society of America, and a pioneer in the field for over 50 years.

The MIT Museum holds a large collection of both Buerger’s crystal models, the materials used to perform x-ray crystallography, cameras used to photograph the results, and woodworking equipment to make the models themselves. Additionally, the Buerger collection contains the materials related to his landmark study on the structure of marcasite.

Many of our models were identified for the museum by Professor Bernhardt John Wuensch in 1983, but some of them are still unidentified. If you have ideas on what these items are, please let us know by clicking on the “contact us about this object” button on the item page.