Oxford Diffraction Limited, based in Abingdon, near Oxford in the UK, was spun out of Oxford Instruments plc in March 2001 in order to develop, manufacture and supply analytical instrumentation for X-ray crystallography. The company emerged from a successful alliance between Oxford Instruments and a dynamic young company in Wroclaw, Poland, called Kuma Diffraction, which itself had spun out from the Polish Academy of Sciences in 1993. Since its start, Oxford Diffraction has grown extremely rapidly and now has over 180 X-ray crystallography systems for both chemical and protein crystallography installed all around the world in more than 25 countries. These are supported from our regional offices in Europe, North America and Asia, or by our distributors and agents in other territories.

In April of 2008 Oxford Diffraction was acquired by a major scientific instrumentation company and is now a part of Varian, Inc.