Editing Mineralogy (section)

==History==
[[File:Mohs mineralogy vol 2 plate 19.jpg|thumb|right|Page from ''Treatise on mineralogy'' by [[Friedrich Mohs]] (1825)]]
[[File:Moon Mineralogy Mapper left.jpg|thumb|right|The [[Moon Mineralogy Mapper]], a [[spectrometer]] that mapped the lunar surface<ref name="JPL M3">{{cite web
|url =http://jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2008-239
|title =NASA Instrument Inaugurates 3-D Moon Imaging
|access-date =19 December 2008
|publisher =JPL
|archive-date =1 January 2009
|archive-url =https://web.archive.org/web/20090101015823/http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2008-239
|url-status =dead
}}</ref>]]
{{Main article|History of mineralogy}}
Early writing on mineralogy, especially on [[gemstone]]s, comes from ancient [[Babylonia]], the ancient [[Greco-Roman]] world, ancient and medieval [[History of China|China]], and [[Sanskrit]] texts from [[History of India|ancient India]] and the ancient Islamic world.<ref name=Needham>{{cite book|last=Needham|first=Joseph|title=Science and civilisation in China|url=https://archive.org/details/sciencecivilisat00need_228|url-access=limited|year=1959|publisher=Cambridge University Press|location=Cambridge |isbn=978-0521058018|pages=[https://archive.org/details/sciencecivilisat00need_228/page/n749 637]–638}}</ref> Books on the subject included the ''[[Naturalis Historia|Natural History]]'' of [[Pliny the Elder]], which not only described many different minerals but also explained many of their properties, and Kitab al Jawahir (Book of Precious Stones) by Persian scientist [[Al-Biruni]].  The [[German Renaissance]] specialist [[Georgius Agricola]] wrote works such as ''[[De re metallica]]'' (''On Metals'', 1556) and ''[[De Natura Fossilium]]'' (''On the Nature of Rocks'', 1546) which began the scientific approach to the subject.  Systematic scientific studies of minerals and rocks developed in post-[[Renaissance]] Europe.<ref name=Needham/> The modern study of mineralogy was founded on the principles of [[crystallography]] (the origins of geometric crystallography, itself, can be traced back to the mineralogy practiced in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) and to the [[microscopic]] study of rock sections with the invention of the [[microscope]] in the 17th century.<ref name=Needham/>

[[Nicholas Steno]] first observed the [[law of constancy of interfacial angles]] (also known as the first law of crystallography) in quartz crystals in 1669.<ref name=Ness/>{{rp|4}} This was later generalized and established experimentally by [[Jean-Baptiste L. Romé de l'Isle]]e in 1783.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|title=Law of the constancy of interfacial angles|encyclopedia=Online dictionary of crystallography|date=24 August 2014|publisher=International Union of Crystallography|url=http://reference.iucr.org/dictionary/Law_of_the_constancy_of_interfacial_angles|access-date=22 September 2015|archive-date=19 October 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161019024137/http://reference.iucr.org/dictionary/Law_of_the_constancy_of_interfacial_angles|url-status=live}}</ref> [[René Just Haüy]], the "father of modern crystallography", showed that crystals are periodic and established that the orientations of crystal faces can be expressed in terms of rational numbers ([[law of rational indices]]), as later encoded in the Miller indices.<ref name=Ness/>{{rp|4}} In 1814, [[Jöns Jacob Berzelius]] introduced a classification of minerals based on their chemistry rather than their crystal structure.<ref name=Rafferty>{{cite book|last1=Rafferty|first1=John P.|title=Geological sciences|date=2012|publisher=Britannica Educational Pub. in association with Rosen Educational Services|location=New York|isbn=9781615304950|pages=14&ndash;15|edition=1st}}</ref> [[William Nicol (geologist)|William Nicol]] developed the [[Nicol prism]], which polarizes light, in 1827&ndash;1828 while studying fossilized wood; [[Henry Clifton Sorby]] showed that thin sections of minerals could be identified by their optical properties using a [[polarizing microscope]].<ref name=Ness/>{{rp|4}}<ref name=Rafferty/>{{rp|15}} [[James D. Dana]] published his first edition of ''A System of Mineralogy'' in 1837, and in a later edition introduced a chemical classification that is still the standard.<ref name=Ness/>{{rp|4}}<ref name=Rafferty/>{{rp|15}} X-ray diffraction was demonstrated by [[Max von Laue]] in 1912, and developed into a tool for analyzing the crystal structure of minerals by the father/son team of [[William Henry Bragg]] and [[William Lawrence Bragg]].<ref name=Ness/>{{rp|4}}

More recently, driven by advances in experimental technique (such as [[neutron diffraction]]) and available computational power, the latter of which has enabled extremely accurate atomic-scale simulations of the behaviour of crystals, the science has branched out to consider more general problems in the fields of [[inorganic chemistry]] and [[solid-state physics]]. It, however, retains a focus on the crystal structures commonly encountered in rock-forming minerals (such as the [[perovskite structure|perovskites]], [[clay minerals]] and [[Tectosilicate|framework silicates]]). In particular, the field has made great advances in the understanding of the relationship between the atomic-scale structure of minerals and their function; in nature, prominent examples would be accurate measurement and prediction of the elastic properties of minerals, which has led to new insight into [[seismology|seismological]] behaviour of rocks and depth-related discontinuities in seismograms of the [[Earth's mantle]]. To this end, in their focus on the connection between atomic-scale phenomena and macroscopic properties, the ''mineral sciences'' (as they are now commonly known) display perhaps more of an overlap with [[materials science]] than any other discipline.