1. Introduction

2. Section 2 Name

According to Robert Hazen [1], “mineral physics is the study of mineralogical problems through the application of condensed matter physics”. In reality, mineral physicists use not only physics but also solid-state chemistry. In addition, they study not only minerals but all materials related to natural minerals (e.g., structural analogs, but also glasses, melts, and fluids). The father of mineral physics is widely accepted to be Francis Birch, whose seminal paper in 1952 summarized the state of knowledge of the elasticity and constitution of the Earth’s interior at that time [2]; however, Birch did not use the name “mineral physics”.  Orson Anderson often cited the German physicist Eduard Grüneisen as the person who first introduced the term mineral physics [3,4].

How did the term ‘‘mineral physics’’ become adopted to define an area of research in the geosciences?  Mineral physics is not really a new way of performing research, but it focuses on areas of research that formerly were treated largely as separate from each other. In the mid 20^th century, geophysics and mineralogy were two avenues in the overall picture of earth sciences, rarely talking with each other with one based on largescale earth studies such as geomagnetism and seismology, and the other one classifying minerals based on color, hardness, optical properties, and diffraction patterns. Then, geophysicists began to become more interested in the physical properties of minerals and mineralogists began to explore how physical properties depend on atomic structure along with exploiting new tools such as automated X-ray diffractometers, electron microprobes and microscopes, various kinds of spectrometry, digital computers, and synchrotron radiation sources, all of which became generally available to geoscientists in the second half of the twentieth century.

Over the last four decades of the 20^th century, many laboratories began to conduct experiments on the physical properties of minerals at high pressures and temperatures. Among these were Orson Anderson at Lamont (and later at the University of California Los Angeles-UCLA), John Jamieson at the University of Chicago, Alvin Van Valkenburg at the National Bureau of Standards, William Bassett and Taro Takahashi at the University of Rochester, Ho-kwang Mao and Peter Bell at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Gene Simmons at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mineo Kumazawa at Nagoya University, Thomas Ahrens at the California Institute of Technology, Gerhard Barsch (and later Earl Graham) at the Pennsylvania State University, Hartmut Spetzler at the University of Colorado, Francis Birch (and later Richard O’Connell) at Harvard University, Murli Manghnani at the University of Hawaii, Syun-iti Akimoto at the University of Tokyo, Jean-Paul Poirier at the Institut de Physique du Globe in Paris and Robert Liebermann at the Australian National University [and later at Stony Brook University].

Mineral physics has grown as an international discipline in the Earth sciences and is being pursued in many university academic communities with concomitant funding from a wide array of funding agencies; e.g., NSF, DOE, NASA.  It has become a significant subject of many papers in the journals of the American Geophysical Union; it is also a new section of the AGU [Mineral and Rock Physics].  Thus, the history of mineral physics is of interest, not only to those working in this field, but also to those I seismology, tectonophysics, volcanology, geochemistry and petrology, whose research depends on understanding the role of the fundamental properties of minerals.

The links between mineral physics and other disciplines of geosciences is represented by this graphic designed by Quentin Williams and modified by Ann Lattimore; as such, it has become known as the Williams-Lattimore diagram in the mineral physics world [5].

References

1. Hazen, R.M. What is mineral physics? EOS Trans. Am. Geophys. Union 1994, 65, 746.
2. Birch, F. Elasticity and constitution of the Earth’s interior. J. Geophys. Res. 1952, 57, 227–286.
3. Molnar, P. Personal communication to Robert Liebermann, March 2019.
4. Liebermann, R. C., The Orson Anderson era of mineral physics at Lamont in the 1960s, Minerals, Special Issue, Mineral physics: In memory of Orson Anderson, published online 4 June 2019, 9(6), 342-360, 2019.
5. Liebermann, R. C., Reflecting on a Half Century of Mineral and Rock Physics at the AGU, EOS, 101, no. 7, 2020