It is over a decade since the first edition of the bestseller Elements of Modern X-ray Physics was published. Given the immense level of interest in X-rays and their exploitation, there have been extensive developments in this field in the intervening years. In response to this progress, Elements of Modern X-ray Physics has been completely revised and updated and includes:

This new edition will appeal to students of courses in X-ray science, as well as biologists, materials scientists, chemists, geologists and physicists using synchrotron radiation in their research.

The availability of intense beams from modern sources has revolutionized the field of X-ray science. The capabilities of these new sources is exemplified on the front cover which shows the diffraction pattern from a crystal of the Photo Active Protein (PYP) obtained using a single pulse of X-rays lasting only 100 pico seconds from a synchrotron storage ring. This extremely short exposure time is contrasted on the back cover with the 1000 seconds or so it took von Laue to record one of the first one of the first ever X-ray diffraction pattern from crystal of ZbS approximately a century ago.

Professor Emeritus Jens Als-Nielsen of the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, has been a pioneer in the field of neutron and x-ray scattering contributing to setting high standards for large international synchrotron centres. Today Jens Als-Nielsen's research is still - even after his official retirement - concentrated around x-ray radiation's potential in biological and medical research.? He was educated as a civil engineer in the field of electrophysics and from 1961-1995 was employed at the Riso National Laboratory, as section leader for the Solid-State Physics Section and later as division leader for the Physics Division. He has spent time at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, ESRF, Grenoble. From 1995 until his retirement in 2007 he was professor in experimental solid-state physics at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen. In 1985 he received the European Physical Society's Hewlett-Packard prize in solid-state physics and in 2009 the Velux Fonden's Honour Award for his research in the field of neutron and X-ray scattering.

Professor Desmond McMorrow is Professor of Physics at University College London. He received his B.Sc from Sheffield University in 1983and his PhD in 1987 from the University of Manchester. After spending time in research at Edinburgh and Oxford he then worked with at the Riso National Laboratory and collaborated with Professor Als-Nieslen between 1998 and 2003. In 2004 he took up his position at UCL and received from 2004 - 2009 the Royal Society Wolfson Merit Award. His research is focussed on understanding how electrons organise themselves in solids to produce the wonderfully diverse range of phenomena encountered in modern condensed matter physics. His research is based mainly on using x-rays and neutrons to probe the structural and magnetic correlations that dominate the low-energy behaviour of these and other interesting classes of solids.