Auguste Bravais

Auguste Bravais was a 19th-century French physicist and mathematician who contributed significantly to crystallography—the study of crystal structures. He is best known for identifying the Bravais lattices, which are the fundamental arrangements of points (or atoms) in a crystal that repeat in space. These lattices describe all possible highly symmetrical patterns in three dimensions, forming the backbone for understanding crystal shapes and properties. Bravais’s work helps scientists understand how atoms organize themselves in solids, influencing fields from chemistry to materials science and solid-state physics.