A practical guide to ore microscopy. Volume 1. Mineral identification / Практическое руководство по рудной микроскопии (минераграфия). Часть 1. Определение минералов

Optical microscopy of metallic ores, based on the polarising reflected light microscope and initially known as mineragraphy, developed rapidly in the second half of the last century. It has become an indispensable tool for the study and beneficiation of mineral deposits and, in many cases, the technique par excellence for metallogenic research, to such an extent that the optical reflection microscope came to be known as the metallogenic microscope. The literature on the subject is abundant but, from the point of view of methodology and mineralogical description and interpretation, some milestones1 such as Schneiderhöhn and Ramdohr (1931), Schneiderhöhn (1952), Ramdohr (1955, 1960, 1980), Picot and Johan (1977, 1982), as well as the determinative tables of Schouten (1962) and Uytenbogaardt and Burke (1971) should be highlighted. These are fundamental contributions in a rich and varied set, which should not be ignored and which the interested reader can document in the excellent synthesis by Criddle (1998), e.g., Spry and Gedlinske (1987), Ineson (1989), Tarkian (1974), Tarkian and Liessmann (1991), and more recently, Cabri (2002), Marshall, Anglin and Mumin (2004), Pracejus (2008), Paar et al. (2016) and Neumann (2019). Virtual texts can also be consulted, such as Ixer and Duller (1998), in addition to the mineralogical information contained in websites such as mindat (cf. References/WEBSITES), IMA/COM (Commission on Ore Mineralogy of the International Mineralogical Association: cf. References/WEBSITES) or RRUFF (cf. References/WEBSITES). In Spanish, the pioneering work of Febrel (1970) stands out; the determinative tables of Novitzky (1957) should also be mentioned, as well as the texts of Hagel (1979) and Fenoll Hach-Alí and Gervilla (2005). From the point of view of mineral optics, the work of Peckett (1992) is noteworthy, while Sanderson (2019) provides a comprehensive and well-documented treatment of optical microscopy. <...>