Description

Wooden drawer wth a paper label that reads "marcasite."

As a graduate student, Martin Buerger attended a lecture given by physicist W.L. Bragg at MIT in 1927. In the lecture, Bragg noted that physicists had discovered that by reflecting x-rays from a crystal onto a photographic plate (x-ray diffraction), they could use that information to determine the arrangement of atoms in a crystal. Buerger borrowed x-ray equipment and was able to determine the atomic structure of marcasite in 1931.

He had several cabinets in his office that had multiple drawers. He would store all of the material related to the x-ray crystallography work on a particular crystal in one drawer. This drawer held all of the materials related to his landmark study on the structure of marcasite.