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Taaffeite, a new beryllium mineral, found as a cut gemstone1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2018

B. W. Anderson ,
C. J. Payne  and
G. F. Claringbull
B. W. Anderson
Affiliation:
Laboratory of the Diamond, Pearl, and Precious Stone Trade Section of the London Chamber of Commerce
C. J. Payne
Affiliation:
Laboratory of the Diamond, Pearl, and Precious Stone Trade Section of the London Chamber of Commerce
G. F. Claringbull
Affiliation:
Department of Mineralogy, British Museum
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Extract

In October 1945 Count Taaffe, a brilliant if unorthodox Dublin gemmologist, in the course of examining a motley collection of gemstones, came across a small mauve stone which puzzled him greatly. The stone had the appearance, and most of thc characters, of spinel, but afforded clear evidence of double refraction. As recounted below, this stone was later found to belong to an entirely new mineral species-—the only case hitherto known where a mineral has been first encountered as a faceted gem.

Type
Research Article
Information
Mineralogical magazine and journal of the Mineralogical Society , Volume 29 , Issue 215 , December 1951 , pp. 765 - 772
Copyright
Copyright © The Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland 1951

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Footnotes

1

Preliminary accounts appeared in Nature, London, 1951, vol. 167, p. 438; Gemmologist, 1951, vol. 20, pp. 75–77 (p. 76, ‘Taaffeite’, Anderson); Journ. Gemmology, 1951, vol. 3, pp. 75–77. [M.A. 11-309.]

References

2 Count Edward Charles Richard Taaffe, born in Bohemia 1898, only son of late Henry, Count Taaffe (12th Viscount Taaffe of Corran, Baron of Ballymote, Co. Sligo) and of Magda, Countess Taaffe.

1 Anderson, B. W. and Payne, C. J., Min. Mag., 1937, vol. 24, p. 548.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

1 W. L. Bragg, The atomic structure of minerals. 1937, p. 94. [M.A. 7–7.]

2 Geller, R. F., Yavorsky, P. J., Steierman, B. L., and Creamer, A. S.. Journal of Research of the National Bureau of Standards, 1946, vol. 36, pp. 277–312 (Research Paper R.P. 1703). [M.A. 11–369.]CrossRefGoogle Scholar