Charles Watson Dana's Systematic Mineral Collection

Charles Watson in the Mineralogy Department You can view an online exhibit of the Watson Collection

History of Charles Watson

Charlie Watson came to mineralogy via his enthusiasm for natural resources, and his being taught mineralogy by H. Stanton Hill at Pasadena City College. Charlie collected his first specimen (crystals of actinolite) on a school field trip, in 1947, to Wrightwood, California.

Watson’s real “love affair” with rare minerals began upon seeing Professor Stan Hill’s collection during a meeting of the Pasadena City College “Dana Club” held at Hill’s home. His collection truly began with a Pasadena City College field trip to Crestmore, California, a limestsone quarry in the Jurupa Mountains near Riverside, California. There Watson collected specimens of Crestmoreite and Vesuvianite, which are still in his collection.  The Watson collection began to develop into a systematic Dana collection during a visit (with Stan Hill and his Mineralogy class) to “Burminco” rock shop. There he purchased one of his rarest specimens, a crystallized specimen of Thortveitite. A Scandium mineral, from the turn-of-the-century collection of O. Ivan Lee, it is still prized as one of the rarest in Watson’s collection. Not long after obtaining the Thortveitite, Watson acquired its “paramorph”, Befanamite, from Burminco as well.

When Watson took his final exam at Pasadena City College and passed it with “flying colors”,  Stan Hill presented him with a B(OH) from the Lagoone of Tuscany, Italy.  A very rare specimen from Hill’s own collection. Hill exclaimed  “Never let a label be separated from the specimen”, stressing the immense importance of a specimens provenance. By the time Watson graduated from Pasadena City College in 1953, his Dana collection had grown to over 500 species. During this period Watson acquired 2 “nuggets” of co-called “Josephinite” from Josephine Co. Oregon.  These were later confirmed to be Awaruite and Orgeonite.  The latter is a Ni-Fe arsenide, still considered an extreme rarity in any Dana System collection. 

Watson’s collection was brought to the Cleveland Museum in 1984. It now approaches 3120 species, one of the largest species collections ever put together by a single collector of modest means.

History of Dana

According to Hurlbut and Klein (1984, p. 1), “A mineral is a naturally occurring homogeneous solid with a definite (but not generally fixed) chemical composition and an ordered atomic arrangement.”

Minerals are sought after for their economic value, which is base on society’s need for the chemical elements contained within them. For example: Iron (Fe) found in Hematite Fe₂O₃, or Copper (Cu) found in Malachite Cu₂CO₃.

After numerous attempts to classify minerals, they were finally grouped according to the presence of their major chemical component.  Then in the middle of the nineteenth century, James Dwight Dana, an American geologist, mineralogist and zoologist created a classification that is still used today: “the Dana’s System.”

James D. Dana systematically arranged all the then known minerals first by their chemistry (elements, halides, sulfides, silicates, etc.), and then by their atomic structure or symmetry of the atomic arrangement. He published his list in 1837 in “A System of Mineralogy”.  It has subsequently been revised and republished several times. Notably in the three-volume set released as the “7th edition”. 

Dana was born in Utica, New York, on the 12th of February 1813, and died on the 14th of April 1895. Amongst his many achievements, he received the Copley gold medal from the Royal Society of London, was elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and became associate editor of the "American Journal of Science and Arts." In December 1836, he was appointed mineralogist and geologist to the U. S. exploring expedition, and sent by the government of the United States to the Southern and Pacific oceans. In 1850, he was appointed Silliman Professor of Natural History and Geology in Yale College. It was at that time he published his “A System of Mineralogy.”

Collections arranged by the Dana’s system are referred to as a “systematic collection”, and when examples are stored or exhibited next to each other they show subtle changes of color as the dominant chemical component changes in one sample to the next. Like a pictorial text book of mineralogy laid out before you, the Dana’s collection are a visual representation. 

References
Klein, C. and Hurlbut, Jr., C. S., (1985) Manual of Mineralogy, after James D. Dana, 21st edition, revised, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 681 pp.

Hazen, Robert M., (1984) Mineralogy: A Historical Review, Journal of Geological Education, v. 32, n. 5, p. 288-298.

www.famousamericans.net/jamesdwightdana/