2017 – Emil MAKOVICKY
Emeritus Professor at the Institute for Geoscience and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen
Emil Makovicky is an outstanding crystallographer who has devoted much of his long and distinguished scientific career to bringing system and clarity to the world of sulfide minerals, particularly the rare sulfosalts. Sulfides are the major ores for many of the metals we use in everyday life, but their crystal chemistry is quite different from the more common silicates due to the polarizable nature of the S anion. Makovicky, through his extensive study of these minerals, has shown that their structures form related homologous series, which can be in turn grouped into larger structural families. Using his modular approach to classification, he has solved approximately 90 crystal structures and identified over 20 new minerals.