French Mineralogist René Just Haüy Founds the Science of Crystallography with the Publication of Treatise of Mineralogy
Overview
In 1801 René Haüy, a French mineralogist, described one of the first coherent theories of crystal structure, published as the Treatise of Mineralogy. From this start grew the science of crystallography, the study of crystals and their structure, growth, and form. Since that time, the science of crystallography has matured and developed new tools, including x-ray diffraction, to study the crystals from quartz to DNA. Haüy's description included an explanation for many phenomena that had been commented on, but never explained, and allowed crystallography to take its place as an undisputed scientific field rather than a simple description of shapes and forms.
Background
Although depictions of minerals appear in paintings and other artwork dating back as far as several thousand years, the first work on mineralogy was not written until the third century BC. For two thousand years, mineralogy remained more descriptive than scientific as it remained unable to predict any properties or to do more than describe the properties of a mineral. In 1669 Nicolaus Steno (1638-1686) noted that the angles between adjacent faces in quartz crystals were always the same, regardless of the crystal's size.
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