TheCambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC) is anon-profit organisation based inCambridge, England. Its primary[citation needed] activity is the compilation and maintenance of theCambridge Structural Database, a database of small moleculecrystal structures. They also perform analysis on the database for the benefit of the scientific community, and write and distributecomputer software to allow others to do the same.
In 1962, Dr.Olga Kennard OBE FRS set up a chemical crystallography group within theDepartment of Chemistry, University of Cambridge. In 1965 she founded the CCDC and established the associatedCambridge Structural Database. At that time, there were only about 3,000 publishedX-ray structures, and the work involved converting these into amachine-readable form.[1] Kennard invitedFrank Allen to join the group, which he did in 1970, becoming Scientific Director and then Executive Director before retiring in 2008.[citation needed]
In 1992, the CCDC moved into its own building adjacent to the Cambridge chemistry department. This new headquarters was designed by the Danish architect ProfessorErik Christian Sørensen and wonThe Sunday Times Building of the Year Award in 1993.[2]
The CCDC still retains very close links as a University Partner Institution that trains students for postgraduate research degrees but from 1987 became an independent company. By 2019 the database had grown to over a million structures.[2]
The staff at the CCDC curate the database of small-molecule organic andmetal-organic crystal structures and make these available for download by the public. They also create and maintain a suite ofcheminformatics software that may be used to apply the data to applications in the life sciences, includingcrystal engineering andmaterials science.[1][3][4]
CCDC developed programs such as ConQuest[5] andMercury[6] that run underWindows, various types ofLinux, andmacOS. ConQuest is a search interface to theCambridge Structural Database (CSD). Mercury is a crystal structure visualizer tool, of which later versions released in 2015 and later provide the functionality to generate3D prints.[7]
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