Mr Lachlan M.D. Cranswick

This mineral was named in honour of Mr Lachlan Cranswick for his application of powder diffraction techniques to develop and maintain the Collaborative Computational Project no.14 in Powder and Small Molecule Single Crystal Diffraction (CCP14).

Lachlan Cranswick graduated from Monash University and joined CSIRO Mineral Products in the early 1990s at Port Melbourne, working initially in the Battery Research Group before becoming the X-ray Diffraction Laboratory Manager.

Lachlan left CSIRO to work in the UK and from 1998 to 2003, firstly at Daresbury and later at Birkenhead College, London, he drove the successful CCP14 project.  This gave him the opportunity to apply his talents cataloguing the most efficient computer programs for X-ray diffraction studies.

In 2003, Lachlan went to Canada and worked at the NRC Canadian Neutron Beam Centre located at Chalk River where he specialized in applying neutron beams to the studies of materials science, structural chemistry, magnetism and geology.  Lachlan died in 2010 .

Lachlan chaired the Commission on Crystallographic Computing for the IUCr and was webmaster for the Canadian National Committee for Crystallography. He edited Newsletters produced by IUCr Commissions on computing, powder diffraction and teaching.