A measurement of the proton structure function $f_2(x. q^2)$

A measurement of the proton structure function F_{\!2}(x,Q^2) is reported for momentum transfer squared Q^2 between 4.5 GeV^2 and 1600 GeV^2 and for Bjorken x between 1.8\cdot10^{-4} and 0.13 using data collected by the HERA experiment H1 in 1993. It is observed that F_{\!2} increases significantly with decreasing x, confirming our previous measurement made with one tenth of the data available in this analysis. The Q^2 dependence is approximately logarithmic over the full kinematic range covered. The subsample of deep inelastic events with a large pseudo-rapidity gap in the hadronic energy flow close to the proton remnant is used to measure the "diffractive" contribution to F_{\!2}.