A century of science in America : $b with special reference to the American Journal of Science, 1818-1918
History
A century of science in America : $b with special reference to the American Journal of Science, 1818-1918
American journal of science; Science -- United States -- History
Among the early mineralogists in this country, who were concerned in the
chemical analyses of minerals, none accomplished more or better work
than Frederick A. Genth. He was born in Germany in 1820 and lived in
that country until 1848, when he came to the United States and settled
in Philadelphia. He had studied in various German universities and
worked under some of the most famous chemists of that time. His papers
in mineralogy number more than seventy-five, in the great majority of
which chemical analyses are given. He published fifty-four successive
articles, the greater part of which appeared in the Journal, which were
entitled Contributions to Mineralogy. In these he gave descriptions of
more than two hundred different minerals, most of which were accompanied
by analyses. He described more than a dozen new and well-established
mineral species. He was especially interested in the rarer elements and
many of his analyses were of minerals containing them. Especially
interesting was his work with the tellurides, the species coloradoite,
melonite and calaverite being first described by him. A long and
important investigation was recorded on Corundum, “Its Alterations and
Associate Minerals,” published in the Proceedings of the American
Philosophical Society in 1873 (=13=, 361). Dr. Genth died in 1893.
The period from 1860 until 1875 was not very productive in mineralogical
investigations. The first ten volumes of the Third Series of the
Journal, covering the years 1871–1876, contained mineralogical articles
by only some fifteen different authors. But from that time on, the
amount of work done and the number of investigators grew rapidly. With
this increase in activity came also a decided change in the character of
the work. The period between 1871 and 1895 can be characterized as one
in which all the various aspects of mineral investigation received more
nearly equal prominence. While the chemical composition of minerals
still held rightly its prominent place, the investigation of the
crystallographic and optical characters and the relationships existing
between all three were of much more frequent occurrence. Edward S. Dana
commenced his scientific work by publishing in 1872 an article on the
crystals of datolite which was probably the first American article
concerned wholly with the description of the crystallography of a
mineral. Samuel L. Penfield began his important investigations in 1877
and the first articles by Frank W. Clarke appeared during this period.
The first edition of the Text Book of Mineralogy by Edward S. Dana with
its important chapters on Crystallography and Optical Mineralogy was
published in 1877 and his revision of the System of Mineralogy (sixth
edition) appeared in 1892.
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