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On the origin of the name ‘quartz’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2018

S. I. Tomkeieff
S. I. Tomkeieff*
Affiliation:
King's College, University of Durham, Newcastle-upon-Tyne
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Extract

Quartz is the commonest of minerals and reference to any dictionary will show that it is crystalline silica, but how or when this substance acquired the name quartz seems to be a still unsolved mystery.

Theophrastus, the pupil and successor of Aristotle, in his book on stones (19), mentions among other stones used for engraving seals, a stone called crystal This name, apparently, is derived from cold, and contract. It would seem from this that the ancient Greeks, as implied by Pliny, believed crystal (modern quartz) to be a variety of supercooled ice. In point of fact the formation of crystal in nature is explained by the earliest writers in a different way. Diodorus Siculus (circa 30 B.C.) suggests that crystal was formed from water hardened by heavenly fire, while Pliny the Elder (circa A.D. 60) says that crystal is ‘a substance which assumes a concrete form from excessive congelation’, and goes on to explain that crystal is only to be found ‘in places where the winter snow freezes with the greatest intensity’ (15, Book 37, 2, 9). Pliny's description of crystal, however, leaves no doubt that he applied this name to the crystalline variety of silica which is now called quartz.

Type
Research Article
Information
Mineralogical magazine and journal of the Mineralogical Society , Volume 26 , Issue 176 , March 1942 , pp. 172 - 178
Copyright
Copyright © The Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland 1942

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