David Sayre | |
|---|---|
| Born | March 2, 1924 |
| Died | February 23, 2012 (aged 87) |
| Alma mater | Yale University Oxford University |
| Known for | Sayre equation X-ray microscopy Coherent diffraction imaging FORTRAN |
| Awards | Ewald Prize |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | X-ray crystallography X-ray microscopy |
| Institutions | IBM Stony Brook University |
| Doctoral advisor | Dorothy Hodgkin |
| Doctoral students | Jianwei (John) Miao |
David Sayre (March 2, 1924 – February 23, 2012) was an American scientist, credited with the early development of direct methods for protein crystallography and of diffraction microscopy (also called coherent diffraction imaging). While working at IBM he was part of the initial team of ten programmers who created FORTRAN, and later suggested the use of electron beam lithography for the fabrication of X-ray Fresnel zone plates.
The International Union of Crystallography awarded Sayre the Ewald Prize in 2008 for the "unique breadth of his contributions to crystallography, which range from seminal contributions to the solving of the phase problem to the complex physics of imaging generic objects by X-ray diffraction and microscopy(...)".[1]