The Tale of Greenlandite: Commemorating the Two-Hundredth Anniversary of Eudialyte (1819–2019)

Abstract

Twenty years before the discovery of the mineral eudialyte, a red garnet-like mineral from Greenland was distributed among mineralogists and chemists in Europe. Furthermore, the first chemical analyses of the Greenlandic mineral reported 10 percent by weight of zirconium oxide. It was given the name greenlandite, and after the discovery of eudialyte many have wondered whether greenlandite could actually be eudialyte. Two-hundred years after the original definition of eudialyte I have tried to find out.