For 50 years the Fedorov Institute of Crystallography, Mineralogy, and
Petrography at Leningrad Mining Institute has held annual memorial
meetings for E. S. Fedorov. Immediate- ly after the jubilee meeting (May
21-24, 1969), the Fedorov All-Union Symposium on Crystal Growth was
held, and the proceedings of that symposium constitute Volume 9 of
Growth of Crystals. The symposium surveyed the advances made in the USSR
in those aspects of growth con- cerned mainly with morphology and
structure in natural crystals or closely related artificial ones, work
which confirmed their relation to E. S. Fedorov and to mineralogical
crystallogra- phy. Crystallography is one of the older branches of
natural science but has recently under- gone a striking rejuvenation on
account of new methods and new concepts. Photogoniometric methods have
been developed in goniometry, while crystal optics has found new lines
of ad- vance in electrooptics and techniques in the ultraviolet and far
infrared regions. Morphologic studies now use a vast range of
techniques, from the hand lens to the electron microscope or
cinemicrography. X-ray analysis is steadily becoming more automatic, and
fast computers are used with accelerated methods of structure
interpretation. Crystal growth is one of the younger divisions of
crystallography; previously t it had been of interest only in
experimental mineralogy, but now it is an important branch of science
and technology with close relations to industry.