What Was The Original Natural Name For Strontium Titanate?
There are a large number of synthesised minerals, particularly titanites, which are artificially created and do not have a counterpart in nature. The highly advanced nature of chemical analysis and toll processing allows for these compounds to exist.
However, strontium titanate is a particularly unusual example in that for decades it was believed to be a wholly artificial mineral, but decades after it was originally patented in 1953, it was found in nature in 1982.
Its discovery in Siberia was notable for many different reasons. First of all, it was a mineral that is commonplace today as a material in advanced ceramics and up until the synthesis of cubic zirconia was amongst the most popular simulated diamonds in the world, yet was only found as extremely tiny crystals in nature.
Secondly, the fact it took so long was the reverse of so many materials, minerals and compounds in chemical analysis. The standard progression is to find a mineral in nature and discover its mineral structure to explore ways in which it could be synthesised.
This process often takes years, if not decades, and it took until recently for chemically identical lab-grown diamonds to be possible to make at sizes large enough for practical and aesthetic uses.
It was found in Murun Massif, a part of Siberia where several rare minerals were discovered, in a rock formation known as Tausonite Hill, which led to it receiving the name tausonite itself.
The name came from the Soviet geochemist Lev Vladimirovich Tauson (1917 – 1989), the director of the Institute of Geochemistry, based in Irkutsk in the Siberian Division of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.
His specialist subject was rare elements found in igneous rocks, which explains in no small part why he was considered to be an appropriate person to name natural strontium titanate after.
It was a largely useless stone in nature, but it helped to prove that some synthetic materials have a basis in the natural world, even if the connection is not always as clear as the shimmering fire of fabulite.
