| Gustav Rose | |
|---|---|
| Born | March 18, 1798 Berlin, Kingdom of Prussia |
| Died | July 15, 1873 Berlin, Kingdom of Prussia |
| Fields | Mineralogy |
Gustav Rose (March 18, 1798 – July 15, 1873) was a German mineralogist who was a native of Berlin. He was a brother of mineralogist Heinrich Rose (1795-1864), the son of pharmacologist Valentin Rose (1762-1807), and the father of noted surgeon Edmund Rose (1836-1914) and the classicist Valentin Rose.
He was a graduate of the University of Berlin, where he was a student of Christian Samuel Weiss (1780-1856). He also studied under chemist Jöns Jakob Berzelius (1779-1848) in Stockholm, where he met Eilhard Mitscherlich (1794-1863), with whom he maintained a lifelong friendship. Rose also provided assistance to Mitscherlich's development of the law of isomorphism. In 1826 he became an associate professor of mineralogy in Berlin, and in 1856 was appointed director of the Royal Mineralogical Museum. From 1863 until his death he was president of the German Geological Society.
Gustav Rose made important contributions in the fields of petrography and crystallography, and is credited for pioneering usage of the reflective goniometer in Germany.[1] He had a particular interest in the relationship between the crystalline form and the physical properties of minerals, and is credited for developing a mineral system that was a combination of chemistry, isomorphy and morphology.[2]
He conducted studies of quartz, feldspar, granite, the mineralogical components of trap rocks, et al. He is remembered for research of meteorites and his investigations of chondrules. With Gustav Tschermak von Seysenegg (1836-1927) and Aristides Brezina (1848-1909), the "Rose-Tschermak-Brezina classification" system of meteorites was developed.
In 1829 with Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) and Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg (1795-1876), he took part in a scientific expedition throughout Imperial Russia, where he performed mineralogical studies in the Altai and Ural Mountains, as well as in the region of the Caspian Sea. He discovered many minerals new to science, including perovskite, named in honor of Russian mineralogist Lev Aleksevich von Perovski (1792-1856). A rose-colored mineral named roselite is named after him, and he is credited for coining the terms howardite and eucrite.[3]