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Taaffeite, a new beryllium mineral, found as a cut gemstone1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2018
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
Footnotes
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
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