Victor Mordechai Goldschmidt

Victor Mordechai Goldschmidt (February 10 1853 in Mainz - May 8 1933 in Salzburg) was a German mineralogist, nature philosopher, and art collector.

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Life

Born 1853 in Mainz, Goldschmidt attended the Bergakademie Freiberg in Saxony and graduated in engineering in 1874. He received his doctorate in 1880 in Heidelberg about mechanical stoen analysis, and continued his studies in Vienna from 1882 to 1887. In 1888 he wrote his habilitation about "Projektion und graphische Krystallbrechung" under the same supervisor like his Ph.D. thesis and founded the Institut für Mineralogie und Kristallographie at Heidelberg. In 1893 he became an adjunct professor (de:Honorarprofessor) in Heidelberg, 1913 he was awarded membership in the "Akademie der Wissenschaften Heidelberg". His Atlas der Krystallformen grew from 1913 until 1923. In this time, in 1917, he was made a "Geheimer Hofrat" (Secret Counsellor). Since 1923 he has been a honorary member of the Naturhistorisch-Medizinischen Verein Heidelberg. 1933 the curatorium of the "v. Portheim-Stiftung" gave its mineralogical-crystallographical institute the name Victor-Goldschmidt-Institut für Kristallforschung. While on faculty at Heidelberg, one of his later famous students was Thomas Jaggar.

Works

• Index der Kristallformen, Catalogue of all known crystal forms of all minerals, 3 volumes, 1886-1891.
• Atlas der Krystallformen, 9 books, Verlag Winters, Heidelberg 1913-1923.