[4] Acta Crystallographica was established in conjunction with the foundation of the International Union of Crystallography in 1948.
Both were established to maintain an international forum for crystallography after the Second World War had led to a loss of international subscription to, and the eventual nine-year closure of, the main pre-war crystallography journal, Zeitschrift für Kristallographie.
[5] The founding editor of Acta Crystallographica was P. P. Ewald, who wrote in the preface to the first issue Acta Crystallographica is intended to offer a central place for publication and discussion of all research in this vast and ever-expanding field.
It borders, naturally, on pure physics, chemistry, biology, mineralogy, technology and also on mathematics, but is distinguished by being concerned with the methods and results of investigating the arrangement of atoms in matter, particularly when that arrangement has regular features.
[5] The rapid expansion in biological crystallography led to the launch of Section D in 1993.