Koksharov, Nikolai

Koksharov, Nikolai Ivanovich 

Born Nov. 23 (Dec. 5), 1818, near Ust’-Kamenogorsk; died Dec. 21, 1892 (Jan. 2, 1893), in St. Petersburg. Russian mineralogist and crystallographer. Academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1866).

Upon graduation from the Institute of the Corps of Mining Engineers in St. Petersburg (1840), Koksharov took part in expeditions headed by the British geologist R. Murchison during his visit to Russia. From 1851 to 1855, Koksharov was a professor at the St. Petersburg Institute of Mines and from 1872 to 1881, its director. Beginning in 1865 he was also director of the Mineralogical Society and editor of many volumes of Zapiski Mineralogicheskogo obshchestva (Transactions of the Mineralogical Society). His first works on crystallography were devoted to the description of crystals in varieties of orthite, magnetic iron ore, brookite, and chlorites. His major work was the multivolume Data on the Mineralogy of Russia (vols. 1–6, 1852–77). The crystallographic constants calculated by Koksharov lie at the basis of the morphological properties of many minerals.

REFERENCES

Grigor’ev, D. P., and I. I. Shafranovskii. Vydaiushchiesia russkie mineralogi. Moscow-Leningrad, 1949.
Shafranovskii, I. I. Nikolai Ivanovich Koksharov. Moscow-Leningrad, 1964.

M. D. DORFMAN