Don Hanawalt – Early Days and His Contribution to Qualitative Powder Diffractometry

Abstract

Don Hanawalt died three years ago this June. To those of us who were privileged to know him he was a special person, a man of boundless energy and tireless enthusiasm. In a very real sense Don was a founder in the use of the powder diffraction as a practical laboratory technique. His pioneering contributions included the universally employed search method which, today, still bears his name, and which really established qualitative phase identification. To Don's chagrin, his work never received the same enthusiastic acceptance among chemists that it did by mineralogists and metallurgists. Several months before Don died, Richard Rose of the Journal Staff interviewed Don with the idea of writing an article for the Journal covering Don's contributions to the field of powder diffraction in general, and his work within the International Centre in particular. Because of Don's untimely demise the work was never completed… but in order that a description of Don's interest and work in the powder diffraction field should be recorded, we have taken the tape transcripts and edited them into what we hope will be a cohesive, if somewhat abbreviated, story. Where possible, we have retained the actual language of the interview. Where necessary, minor corrections have been made to some of the dates mentioned by Don. The interview starts by reviewing the early days of X-ray analysis.