Fedor Ivanovich Rukavishnikov (1902–1942) and former rukavishnikovite (now ternesite)

Abstract

Fedor Ivanovich Rukavishnikov is a major specialist in the field of mineralogy of the Urals. Author of the first Ural identification of minerals based on external characteristics. He worked at the Sverdlovsk Mining Institute from 1925 to 1937 and was successively an assistant, associate professor of the Department of Mineralogy, and also served as vice-rector and rector. In 1937 he went to Moscow to work at the Institute of Geological Sciences of the Academy of Sciences USSR. In 1941 he joined the Moscow militia, was captured and died in a concentration camp in 1942. A new mineral was named in honor of Fyodor Ivanovich – rukavishnikovite, which was discovered by B.V. Chesnokov in the burnt dumps of the Chelyabinsk coal basin. The International Mineralogical Association did not approve it as a new mineral species, and a few years later a natural analogue of rukavishnikovite, ternesite, was found in Germany