Lawrence’s concern, Frank recalled, was that politics might cause dissension and distraction on the laboratory floor—creating what he called “inhomogeneity” in the lab.

Towards the end of the twentieth century, concerns arose regarding the potential inhomogeneity of therapeutic effects because of socio-political characteristics such as race or sex.

It cannot be overemphasized that homogeneous diffraction alone is insensitive to structural inhomogeneity smaller than about 2 nm in extent.