Friday 12 August 2016

Mineral Greenockite

In 1840 when the Glasgow, Paisley and Greenock railway line was being constructed a new mineral was discovered while a tunnel was being dug near Bishopton.  It was named Greenockite.


It is seemingly quite a rare mineral - a naturally occurring cadmium sulphide.  You can read more about its structure and analysis here.


Greenockite was named after Earl Charles Murray Cathcart, the then Lord Greenock (1783-1859) who became the second Earl Cathcart on the death of his father.  He had a passion for geology and minerology and was a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.  Cathcart had a distinguished military career and was Governor General of British North America.

Charles Murray Cathcart
Arthur Connell (1794-1863), Scottish chemist and mineralogist was responsible for describing and naming the mineral.

4 comments:

  1. And I used to think that Greenockite was something that children flew..."let's go Greenockite" will never feel the same again :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Interesting. You could have called yourself Greenockite rather than the Greenockian.

    ReplyDelete

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