Gemmology / Геммология

The science of gemmology is concerned with the study of the technical aspects of gemstones and gem materials and the use of these aspects for identification purposes. For well over 2000 years, philosophers and scientists have been captivated by the beauty and the enigma of gems, and down the years have left records of their observations on these ornamental products of nature. One of the first gemstone books in English was written by Thomas Nichols as long ago as 1652*, but it was only in the last half of the nineteenth century that the science of gemmology began to emerge as a specialized offshoot of an already well-established branch of science, mineralogy. <...>