Laboratory of N.V. Belov as a school of highly qualified experts

The occasion of Nikolai Vasil’evich Belov’s 120th birthday is a good reason for recalling the works of this prominent representative of the pleiad of famous Russian and foreign crystallographers. Not only experts in structural crystallography passed through his school. The number of postgraduates that became candidates of sciences (and some, later, doctors) under the guidance of Belov is amazing. Many of his students organized and headed new laboratories at the Institute of Crystallography and at other institutes. We all remember the original methods proposed by Belov for determining the atomic structure of crystals in periods before and after the time when computers arose. New directions in the study of minerals and the solution of structural problems of crystal chemistry, crystal physics, and materials science continue in the community of crystallographers. They are being actively developed, and not only by Belov’s students.