Richard Taaffe

Edward Charles Richard Taaffe (1898–1967), known as Richard, was an Austrian gemmologist who found the first cut and polished taaffeite in November 1945. He was the son of Count Henry Taaffe, 12th Viscount Taaffe, an Austrian landowner who once held hereditary titles from two different countries: he was a Count (Graf) in the Holy Roman Empire and a viscount in the Peerage of Ireland. Richard Taaffe, however, inherited neither the viscountcy, which was suspended by the British Crown in 1919 as his father had served on the Austrian side in World War I, nor the title of Count, as Austria had generally abolished titles of nobility in 1919. With Richard Taaffe's death in 1967, no heirs to either title remained and both the Austrian and the Irish titles became extinct.