Mineralogy is a very ancient subject, and its emergence and development are the result of long-term human production practices.
As early as the Paleolithic Age in my country’s prehistory, people began to understand minerals and rocks, and used them to make production tools (stone tools) and decorations. The period of great change from slave society to feudal society was also the transition period from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age, reflecting the great development of mining and metallurgy at that time. The earliest work in the world that systematically describes mineral raw materials should be the "Shan Hai Jing" written in the late Spring and Autumn Period and early Warring States Period (i.e. 475 BC) in China. The book mentions more than 80 minerals, rocks and ores, which is more comprehensive than the Western "Metal-like" "On the Stone" and "On the Stone" were published much earlier and are richer in content. In feudal society, productivity had developed rapidly, and accordingly "Guanzi·Dishu", "Huainanzi", "Baopuzi", "Mengxi Bi Tan", "Compendium of Materia Medica" and "Tiangong Kaiwu" appeared Many other works recording mineral knowledge are extremely valuable mineral historical materials. Among them, Li Shizhen's medical monograph "Compendium of Materia Medica" (1596) in the Ming Dynasty comprehensively and reliably described the composition, form, properties, identification characteristics, occurrence, origin and medicinal uses of 38 medicinal minerals; and during the Warring States Period (AD The "Six Articles of Guanzi" in "Guanzi·Dishu" (475 BC - 221 BC) are the first to reveal the objective laws of mineral formation and the indicator minerals for some useful minerals in nature. They are the origin of mineralogy ( One of the budding ideas of Genetic mineralogy. In his work "On the Origin of Minerals" (1556), the German Georgius Agricola first separated minerals from rocks and introduced the term "mineral".
In short, in the long period before the 19th century, mineralogy was always concerned with the recording and description of surface characteristics of minerals. Of course, it is undeniable that it also laid a solid foundation for the subsequent development of mineralogy.
Since the mid-19th century, with the rapid advancement of science and technology, mineralogy has developed rapidly and has experienced several major changes.
First of all, the polarizing microscope was successfully created in 1857 and applied to the research and identification of minerals. At the same time, combined with methods such as chemical analysis and crystal angle measurement, it was possible to begin to analyze the chemical composition, geometric form, and physics of minerals. He conducted systematic research on chemical properties, occurrence, etc., and proposed the classification of chemical components of minerals, which greatly promoted the development of mineralogy, formed an independent discipline, and led to the first revolution in mineralogy. The representative work during this period was "Descriptive Mineralogy" (1837-1892, 1st-6th edition) by J.D. Dana of the United States.
Since W.K.R?ntgen discovered X-rays in 1895, M.F.T. von Laue successfully applied X-rays to mineral crystal structure analysis in 1912. From the 1920s to the 1940s, the United Kingdom The crystallographers W.H.Bragg and W.L.Bragg and the famous former Soviet crystallographer Belov (Н.В.Белов) measured a large number of mineral crystal structures, thus confirming the geometric theory of crystal structures and recognizing minerals. The interrelationship between the chemical composition, crystal structure, and physical properties opened up the crystal chemistry direction of modern mineralogy, brought about the second revolution in mineralogy, and laid the foundation for the crystal chemical classification of minerals.
Since the 1930s, physical chemistry theory and thermodynamic phase equilibrium theory have been introduced into the field of mineralogy to explore the conditions for the formation, stability and change of minerals, and their relationship with mineralogy characteristics. Interrelationships reveal the regularity of mineral combinations and spatio-temporal distribution, promote the study of mineral origin, fundamentally get rid of the description of pure surface phenomena in mineralogy, and realize the third revolution in mineralogy.
Since the 1960s, due to the application of a series of modern testing technologies (such as electron optics and laser testing technology, various spectroscopy technologies), high temperature and ultra-high pressure experimental technology, calorimetric experimental methods and electronic computers, at the same time Further comprehensive application of modern solid state physics, quantum chemistry, crystallization chemistry and physical chemistry theory has led to new major breakthroughs in the depth and breadth of mineralogy research, enabling modern mineralogy to study mineral composition and structure from the past. The study of average composition and average structure has entered into the analysis of micro-area trace components and the determination of fine structures. It has developed rapidly in the direction of rapid, automatic, quantitative and high-precision, and gradually involves more research on the mantle and cosmic celestial materials. Therefore, it has greatly promoted the main directions of modern mineralogy and some edge disciplines, such as systematic mineralogy, theoretical mineralogy, genetic mineralogy, applied mineralogy, mineral crystal chemistry, mineral crystal morphology, mineral physics, quantum minerals Continuous development and improvement of science, experimental mineralogy and cosmic mineralogy.