Knowledge without frontiers Knowledge Without Frontiers | Page 92

Zoisite from the type locality Prickler Halt at Saualpe in Austria.
Slovenian Museum of Natural History. Photo: Sanja Živković.
A COMPLETELY NEW MINERAL
In 1804 the mineral trader Simon Prešeren
procured for Zois materials from Saualpe in Ca-
rinthia and Zois recognised a new, hitherto un- and is widely used as a gemstone. It is typically
by foreign experts. In honour of Zois, the Ger- pending on the site. The pink variety of zoisite is
known mineral, which was later also confirmed
man mineralogist Abraham Gottlob Werner,
who devised a system for classifying minerals,
named it zoisite.
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Zoisite is a silicate found in the Earth’s crust
opaque and white or grey, but the hues vary de-
called thulite. A blue and violet variety was di-
scovered in Tanzania, which is called tanzanite
and is valued as highly as precious gemstones.