Background

Gustav Rose was born on March 18, 1798, in Berlin, Germany, the son of pharmacologist Valentin Rose (1762–1807). He was a brother of mineralogist Heinrich Rose (1795–1864). Rose’s family had a strong tradition in science. His grandfather, Valentin Rose the elder, invented the low-melting alloy still known as Rose’s metal.

Education

Rose was a graduate of the University of Berlin, where he was a student of mineralogist Christian Samuel Weiss (1780–1856). His dissertation, De sphenis atque titanitae systematae crystallino, was presented at the University of Kiel in December 1820. In this work, the first monograph on crystal morphology of a mineral species based on accurate measurements with a reflecting goniometer, Rose established the identity of sphene and titanite. He also studied under Swedish physical chemist Jöns Jakob Berzelius (1779–1848) in Stockholm.

Career

When he was only seventeen, Gustav and his brothers fought in the campaign against Napoleon in 1815. The following year his apprenticeship at a mine in Silesia was interrupted by illness. He returned to Berlin, where he studied mineralogy under C. S. Weiss.

Following his elder brother Heinrich, later professor of chemistry at Berlin, and Eilhard Mitscherlich, whose discovery of isomorphism, announced in 1819, had been supported by Rose’s accurate goniometric measurements, he then spent several years in Berzelius’ laboratory at Stockholm. Rose returned to Berlin in 1823 to become a Dozent under Weiss and an extraordinary professor in 1826. He became an ordentlicher professor in 1839, succeeded Weiss as director of the Mineralogy Museum in 1856, and remained active in these posts until his death.

In 1829 Rose, with C. G. Ehrenberg, was chosen to accompany Humboldt on a scientific journey commissioned by the czar to the Urals, the Altai, and the Caspian Sea. This took him as far as the frontier of China. Rose’s two-volume chronicle of the journey includes extensive observations on geology, mineralogy, and mineral resources of the regions traversed that were quoted widely and for a long time were the chief source of information on these matters.

Rose published about 125 papers, touching nearly all aspects of mineralogy known in his time. Much of his work was concerned with particular minerals or mineral groups. He discovered about fifteen new minerals, all still regarded as valid species, the most important being anorthite, and he also made significant contributions in many other fields. Through his meticulous goniometric measurements, he contributed to the development of the concept of isomorphism, adding some important examples. With Riess (1843), in his only paper with a coauthor, he introduced the still-current terms “analogous pole” and “antilogous pole” in connection with the correlation of pyroelectric effects with morphology. He properly distinguished between positive and negative rhombohedrons in quartz and established its correct crystal class. Rose made important contributions to the study of meteorites, to the crystallography of the brittle metals and the noble metals, and to experimental petrology, repeating and extending James Hall’s experiments on marble. One of his last papers (1871) dealt with the relations between thermoelectricity and morphology in pyrite.

Rose’s Elemente der Krystallographie, in the first and second editions, represented the latest advances of the science at the time.

Yet the first volume of the third edition, which was prepared by Alexander Sadebeck under Rose’s direction and appeared just after Rose’s death, shows practically no sign of the progress of the science in the thirty-five years following the appearance of the second edition. By contrast, Rose’s Mineralsystem (1852) was strictly modern and most influential. It put an end to the “natural classifications” that had been a hindrance to the progress of mineralogy and became a model for later classifications.

With a dozen others, among them Humboldt and Mitscherlich, Rose founded the Deutsche Geologische Gesellschaft in July 1848, just at the time that publication of the 1: 100,000 geologic map of Silesia, by Rose and Beyrich, was begun. Rose was very active in the society, serving as secretary and later repeatedly as president. In 1852 he presented fifty thin sections of rocks at a meeting of the society, seven years before the appearance of Sorby’s classic paper, which usually is considered to mark the beginning of microscopic petrography.

Achievements

• Rose's major achievement was in his successful directorship in the Royal Mineralogical Museum at Berlin. Also, he is noted for many journeys that he made in different parts of Europe for the sake of mineralogical study, and in 1829 with A. von Humboldt and C. G. Ehrenberg (1795-1876), professor of medicine at Berlin, took part in an expedition to the Ural and Altai mountains and the Caspian Sea, which yielded information of primary importance concerning the mineralogy of the Russian Empire.
  
  He is still considered to be an originator of the science of petrography. He was the first in his own country to use the reflecting goniometer for the measurement of the angles of crystals and to teach the method of studying rocks by means of microscopic sections. He also devoted special attention to meteorites and to the problem presented by the different structure of the stony matter in them and in the crust of the earth, and just before his death, which took place at Berlin on the 15th of July 1873, he was engaged in investigating the formation of the diamond.
  
  Another Rose's achievement was in providing support in the establishment of the German Geological Society, of which he was president from 1863 until the end of his life.
  
  A rose-colored mineral named roselite is named after Rose, and he is credited with coining the terms howardite and eucrite.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Elemente der krystallographie, nebst einer tabellarischen uebersicht der mineralien nach den krystallformen

    (Volume 2)

    1838
  • Elemente der Krystallographie 1830
  • Über das meteoreisen von Iquique in Peru 1873
  • Anwendung Der Linearprojection Zum Berechnen Der Krystalle 1876
  • Mineralogisch-Geognostische Reise Nach Dem Ural, Dem Altai Und Dem Kaspischen Meere: Mit Kupfern, Karten Und Holzschnitten 1842
  • Die Weihnachtsspiele im sächsischen Erzgebirge 1861
  • Eilhardt Mitscherlich 1864

Membership

Rose was a member of the German Geological Society, which he also helped to found and of which he was president from 1863 until the end of his life.

Personality

Rose’s biographers all emphasize that he was exceptionally modest and gentle and enjoyed the lasting esteem of his colleagues and students.

Connections

Rose was a father of noted surgeon Edmund Rose (1836–1914), and the classicist Valentin Rose.

Father:

Valentin Rose

1762–1807

Brother:

Heinrich Rose

Son:

Edmund Rose

Son:

Valentin Rose

Grandfather:

Valentin Rose the elder

He invented the low-melting alloy still known as Rose’s metal.

collaborator:

Christian Ehrenberg

In 1829 Rose, with C. G. Ehrenberg, was chosen to accompany Humboldt on a scientific journey commissioned by the czar to the Urals, the Altai, and the Caspian Sea.

collaborator:

Alexander von Humboldt

collaborator:

Gustav Seysenegg

With Gustav Tschermak von Seysenegg (1836–1927) and Aristides Brezina (1848–1909), the "Rose-Tschermak-Brezina classification" system of meteorites was developed by Rose.

collaborator:

Aristides Brezina

4 May 1848 – 25 May 1909

teacher:

Jöns Jacob Berzelius

Baron Jöns Jacob Berzelius (20 August 1779 – 7 August 1848), known throughout his life as simply Jacob Berzelius or Jakob Berzelius, was a Swedish chemist. Berzelius is considered, along with Robert Boyle, John Dalton, and Antoine Lavoisier, to be one of the founders of modern chemistry.

teacher:

C. S. Weiss

References

• Dictionary of Scientific Biography Volume 11
  1975
• Zeitschrift der Deutschen Geologischen Gesellschaft
  2010