We are remembered by our exaggerations. So at a recent reunion
of my former research-group members, several recalled my saying
"When you see a standard deviation in an x-ray crystal
structure, multiply it by pi [π, 3.141...], or if the structure
is done by friends, by e [2.718...]." I was talking about
structures of molecules—details of their geometry, also of a
particularly fruitful way to gain knowledge of these structures.
And of the error estimates in such studies. There is no more
basic enterprise in chemistry than the determination of the
geometrical structure of a molecule. Such a determination, when
it is well done, ends speculation and provides us with the
starting point for understanding every physical, chemical and
biological property of the molecule. Indeed, the chemical
sciences (only modestly imperialistic, I take them to range from
materials science through molecular biology) are what they are
today largely as the result of careful structure determination.
We'd be still waiting in ignorance if