New mineral named after ASU professor

A recently discovered mineral has been named after Peter Buseck [right, credit ASU] a Regents’ Professor in SESE and the Dept. of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Arizona State University. The mineral, buseckite, was discovered in a meteorite found near the village of Zakłodzie, Poland.

Last month scientists from the California Institute of Technology presented their findings of the discovery of the new mineral, buseckite, at the 43rd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. A paper by Chi Ma, John R. Beckett and George R. Rossman describing buseckite will be published in July 2012.  

The names of the minerals are chosen by the discoverers, after approval by a commission of the International Mineralogical Association. Minerals are generally named after their compositions, places where first found, or people chosen to be honored.

To quote Ma et al., “The name is in honor of Peter R. Buseck, a mineralogist at Arizona State University, for his many contributions to mineralogy, meteorite research and transmission electron microscopy.”

Buseckite is an iron-rich sulfide with a wurtzitetype structure. It is black, opaque, and also contains zinc, manganese, and magnesium. The mineral and its name have been approved by the Commission on New Minerals, Nomenclature and Classification of the International Mineralogical Association (IMA 2011- 070).

[excerpted from the SESE Source, May 2012 issue]