Uploaded September 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Crystals aren’t just beautiful - they help us understand our world.
But how? It's all to do with one of the biggest scientific breakthroughs of the 20th Century: X-ray crystallography.
X-ray crystallography has been used to unlock the secrets of our DNA as well as search for water on Mars. It's so important that multiple Nobel Prizes have been awarded for advances in this field.
It remains to be seen how many more Nobel Prizes will be awarded for discoveries made with the help of X-ray crystallography in the future.
This content was created as a co-production between Nobel Prize Outreach and the BBC.
Crystals aren’t just beautiful - they help us understand our world.
But how? It's all to do with one of the biggest scientific breakthroughs of the 20th Century: X-ray crystallography.
X-ray crystallography has been used to unlock the secrets of our DNA as well as search for water on Mars. It's so important that multiple Nobel Prizes have been awarded for advances in this field.
It remains to be seen how many more Nobel Prizes will be awarded for discoveries made with the help of X-ray crystallography in the future.
This content was created as a co-production between Nobel Prize Outreach and the BBC.
