Rocks and Rock Minerals: A Manual of the Elements of Petrology without the use of a Microscope

Louis V. Pirsson

Published by John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1911

About this Item

Rocks and Rock Minerals: A Manual of the Elements of Petrology without the use of a Microscope; for the geologist, engineer, miner, architect, etc., and for instruction in colleges and schools; by Louis V. Pirsson, professor of physical geology of the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University, geologist U. S. Geological Survey, assoc. editor Amer. Journal of Science, etc.; First edition total issue five thousand; John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1911. This book was reprinted many times over the ensuing decades. Louis Valentine Pirsson (1860 1919) was an American geologist and petrologist, best known for devising the CIPW norm for classifying igneous rocks. (He is the P in CIPW.) His 1915 Textbook of Geology was for decades the most widely used in the United States. Pirsson's intensive study of rock microscopy and petrography repeatedly raised problems in the classification of magmatic rocks, which at the time was often inconsistent. In 1899, the four petrologists Cross, Iddings, Piersson, and Washington met to develop a new classification based on quantitative chemical analysis. The idea was to develop a rigorously quantitative scheme that was independent of a rock's crystallization history (as it cooled) but that would reflect the characteristics of the assumed homogeneous melt from which it derived. Pirsson mediated among the different positions of his colleagues and brought the project to a successful conclusion. With its 1902 publication, the new scheme, named CIPW for the researchers' initials in alphabetical order, was immediately widely adopted. This book is in near-fine condition. This first edition of a foundation work on geology is extremely rare. At the time this book was posted on the internet it was the only copy available. The first ownership written on the first blank endpaper was from a 3rd year Forestry student.

Seller Inventory # 2578d

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Rocks and Rock Minerals: A Manual of the Elements of Petrology without the use of a Microscope
• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, New York
• Publication Date: 1911
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Near Fine