In 1915 a unique father-son team, William Lawrence Bragg
(1890–1971), and his father, William Henry Bragg (1862–1942),
won the Nobel Prize in physics for their seminal roles in X-ray
crystallography, which was necessary to study the structure of
complex organic molecules and allow further progress in
pharmaceuticals research. Bragg began his university studies in
mathematics in Australia but transferred to Cambridge, where he
changed his focus to physics. In 1912, Max von Laue reported the
diffraction of X-rays by a crystal. Bragg, who was by then a
doctoral student with J. J. Thomson at Cambridge, and his father
began exploring this phenomenon immediately. They brought
different interests and skills to the collaboration. William
Henry's original interest was in what diffraction showed about
the nature of X-rays, and he was a skilled experimenter and
designer of instruments. William Lawrence was more concerned
with what X-rays revealed about the crystalline state, and he
possessed a powerful ability to concep