Mineralogical Society

(full name, All-Union Mineralogical Society), a society founded in St. Petersburg in 1817 by Academician V. M. Severgin, Professor D. I. Sokolov, and others.

As stated in its first charter, the society founded its activities on a broad definition of mineralogy (”mineralogy in the broaaest sense of the word”). The society sought to disseminate knowledge concerning minerals, rocks, and ores.

While the society was being organized, a minerals exhibit was set up. The exhibit subsequently became a museum of minerals, rocks, and other substances extracted from the earth. The collection was later turned over to the Mining Institute. The society’s publications and its efforts to conduct a systematic geological study of Russia (mainly from 1864 to 1882) were of great importance. The material gathered in this study later provided the basis for the compilation of a general geological map of European Russia.

After the organization of the Geological Committee in 1882, the Mineralogical Society, under the leadership of A. P. Karpinskii and F. N. Chernyshev, devoted more attention to theoretical research in geology and mineralogy. E. S. Fedorov’s research in crystallography was particularly important during this period. In 1919 the society was reorganized as the Russian Mineralogical Society; it was renamed the All-Union Mineralogical Society in 1947, when it was placed under the jurisdiction of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. The society has local divisions in Alma-Ata, Apatity (Murmansk Oblast), Baku, Dushanbe, Yerevan, Irkutsk, Kiev, Krasnoiarsk, Moscow, Novosibirsk, Rostov-on-Don, Saratov, Sverdlovsk, Tashkent, Ulan-Ude, and Frunze.

The publications of the society and of its local divisions disseminate findings of research in mineralogy and petrography; information about various substances extracted in nearly all the regions of the USSR and in a number of foreign countries; and materials dealing with new branches of science and new methods of research (geochemistry, physicochemical petrology, and the universal method of studying crystalline substances).

The presidents and directors of the Mineralogical Society have included N. I. Koksharov (from 1865), P. V. Eremeev (from 1892), A. P. Karpinskii (from 1899), A. P. Gerasimov (from 1937), S. S. Smirnov (from 1945), A. N. Zavaritskii (from 1947), V. A. Nikolaev (from 1952), A. G. Betekhtin (from 1960), and P. M. Tatarinov (from 1962).