gems, chrysoberyl, alexandrite, beryl, emerald, phenakite, Russia, Ural Mountains, Malysheva

Schmetzer and Burlakov examine the history of the discovery, description, and naming of alexandrite and phenakite from the emerald mines of the Urals, using surviving correspondence and contemporary publications to distinguish documented events from later legends. Phenakite was obtained by Yakov Vasilievich Kokovin and passed through Lev Alekseevich Perovskii to Nils Gustaf Nordenskiöld in 1832; because of its resemblance to quartz, Nordenskiöld named the new beryllium silicate phenakite, from the Greek for “deceiver,” although it had already been known locally as Kokovinite in honor of Kokovin. The first color-changing chrysoberylls were found in 1833 and likewise passed from Kokovin through Perovskii to scientists including Franz von Wörth and Nordenskiöld. Correspondence from 1834 records both their characteristic cyclic twinning and their change of color between daylight and candlelight. The material continued to be called chrysoberyl or cymophane in scientific correspondence and publications through the 1830s; the name alexandrite first appeared in the 1842 jubilee volume of the Russian Imperial Mineralogical Society, where the naming in honor of Crown Prince Alexander, later Tsar Alexander II, was attributed to a proposal by Nordenskiöld. The authors show that the often-repeated claim that alexandrite was discovered on the Crown Prince’s coming-of-age day in April 1834 cannot be correct, since the crystals had already been found in 1833. They likewise reject as legend the story that Nordenskiöld discovered the color change after dropping what he thought was an emerald and finding it by candlelight. Surviving documents do not establish who first observed the color change, nor do they establish precisely what role Perovskii played in the eventual naming of alexandrite. The article also reviews the Ural emerald deposits and the occurrence of alexandrite and phenakite within them, noting that both minerals were reported from all six mining districts examined by Grewingk in 1854, with the best phenakites from the Starsky area and fine alexandrites from the Sarewtinsky mines.