The Mineralogy of the Diamond

Recent years have seen the publication of a great many articles, both in the Soviet Union and elsewhere, reporting the results of research into the crystallomorphology, chemical composition and various properties of diamond crystals. By now, therefore, there has accumulated a tremendous amount of factual material, provided by specialists in different fields of science and technology employing up-to-date methods of investigation. However, this material is highly fragmentary, making it difficult to obtain an idea of the detail to which diamond crystals have been studied. There is thus an urgent need for a special mineralogical text on diamonds to summarize the available material and ascertain the degree to which various problems have been studied. The present author has been involved in research on diamond crystals for many years. He has studied large numbers of diamonds from various deposits, including some non-Soviet mines. The material collected over the years, combined with analysis and summary of the host of data in the literature, has enabled the author to write this book. The main topics treated therein are the varieties of diamond crystals and polycrystalline aggregates, the structure of diamond, its chemical composition, imperfections in the structure of real crystals, crystallomorphology, properties, genetic types of diamond deposit, paragenesis, conditions and methods for synthesis of diamonds. Data from mineralogical investigations of diamond provide one of the most important foundations for any theory of genesis of natural diamonds. The extant theories are many and contradictory and there is no real agreement between different workers. Our own data have enabled us to analyze the plausibility of the theories and to consider the genesis of diamond in the concluding chapter of the book.