The front entrance of the CCDC headquarters in Cambridge, UK

The Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC) is a

non-profit organisation A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...

based in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

, England. Its primary activity is the compilation and maintenance of the

Cambridge Structural Database The Cambridge Structural Database (CSD) is both a repository and a validated and curated resource for the three-dimensional structural data of molecules generally containing at least carbon and hydrogen, comprising a wide range of organic, metal- ...

, a database of small molecule

crystal structure In crystallography, crystal structure is a description of the ordered arrangement of atoms, ions or molecules in a crystal, crystalline material. Ordered structures occur from the intrinsic nature of the constituent particles to form symmetric pat ...

s. They also perform analysis on the database for the benefit of the scientific community, and write and distribute

computer software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

to allow others to do the same.

History

In 1962, Dr.

Olga Kennard Olga Kennard, Lady Burgen ( Weisz; born 23 March 1924) is a British scientist specialising in crystallography, and founder of the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre. Her research focused on determining the structures of organic molecule ...

OBE FRS set up a chemical crystallography group within the

Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge The Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry is the University of Cambridge's chemistry department. It was formed from a merger in the early 1980s of two separate departments that had moved into the Lensfield Road building decades earlier: the Depart ...

. In 1965 she founded the CCDC and established the associated

. At that time, there were only about 3,000 published

X-ray structures An X-ray, or, much less commonly, X-radiation, is a penetrating form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation. Most X-rays have a wavelength ranging from 10 picometers to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30 ...

, and the work involved converting these into a machine-readable form. In 1992, the CCDC moved into its own building adjacent to the Cambridge chemistry department. This new headquarters was designed by the Danish architect Professor Erik Christian Sørensen and won ''

The Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, whi ...

'' Building of the Year Award in 1993. The CCDC still retains very close links as a University Partner Institution that trains students for postgraduate research degrees but from 1987 became an independent company.

Current research

The staff at the CCDC curate the database of small-molecule organic and metal-organic crystal structures and make these available for download by the public. They also create and maintain a suite of

cheminformatics Cheminformatics (also known as chemoinformatics) refers to use of physical chemistry theory with computer and information science techniques—so called "''in silico''" techniques—in application to a range of descriptive and prescriptive problem ...

software that may be used to apply the data to applications in the life sciences, including

crystal engineering Crystal engineering studies the design and synthesis of solid-state structures with desired properties through deliberate control of Intermolecular force, intermolecular interactions. It is an Interdisciplinarity, interdisciplinary academic field, ...

and materials science.

Programs Developed

CCDC developed programs such as ConQuest and

Mercury Mercury commonly refers to: * Mercury (planet), the nearest planet to the Sun * Mercury (element), a metallic chemical element with the symbol Hg * Mercury (mythology), a Roman god Mercury or The Mercury may also refer to: Companies * Merc ...

that run under

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

and various types of

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...

, including

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

. ConQuest is a search interface to the

(CSD). Mercury is crystal structure visualizer tool and versions of Mercury released in 2015 and later provide the functionality to generate

3D print 3D printing or additive manufacturing is the construction of a three-dimensional object from a CAD model or a digital 3D model. It can be done in a variety of processes in which material is deposited, joined or solidified under computer co ...

References

External links

The Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre
{{Authority control 1965 establishments in England Chemical industry in the United Kingdom Crystallography organizations Partner institutions of the University of Cambridge Research institutes established in 1965 Research institutes in Cambridge Science and technology in Cambridgeshire

History

Current research

Programs Developed

See also

References

External links