EPSS Research Geochemist and Adjunct Professor Alan Rubin has been honored with a new mineral named after him by the Commission on New Minerals, Nomenclature and Classification (CNMNC).

“I am proud to receive such an honor, given that there are only about 5200 known minerals and lots of worthy people are not so honored,” he said.

The garnet mineral rubinite (2016-110) is a semi-precious gemstone. It was found in two different carbonaceous chondrites – the Vigarano meteorite, which fell near Vigarano Pieve, Ferrara, Italy, and the Allende CV3 meteorite, which fell near Pueblito de Allende, Chihuahua, Mexico. Researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Tohoku University in Japan detected the rubinite inside calcium-aluminum-rich inclusions within the meteorites. Tohuku’s announcement about the discovery can be read here.

Type material is deposited in the meteorite collection of the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences at Caltech and at Tohoku University’s Division of Earth and Planetary Materials Science Graduate School of Science. Its formula is Ca₃Ti³⁺₂Si₃O₁₂.

In addition to its listing on the CNMNC website, data about rubinite will also be published in Mineralogical Magazine and in the European Journal of Mineralogy.