P40. Mineral crystal chemistry: a powerful tool for our understanding of the inner nature of geomaterials. In memory of Alessandro Guastoni

Elements are letters and minerals are words. Only by learning and using mineralogical knowledge well, especially mastering abundant mineralogical vocabulary, can we write great articles on Earth sciences (Anhuai Lu, IMA President 2020-2022).
Insights into the crystal chemistry of minerals allow to shed light on the intimate nature of geomaterials and geological evolution of the rocks they form. At the same time, the crystallographic mineralogy, as a basic discipline of geosciences and materials science, also contributed to the discovering of new mineral species, improving of mineral taxonomy, a better understanding of crystal-structure complexity as well as to the assessment of the structure-property relationships of minerals and their synthetic analogues, which are relevant for industrial, technological, and environmental applications.
This session welcomes contributions from experimental and theoretical studies related to all the above topics as well as to improvements on the nomenclature and classification of minerals and to advances in methods of characterization of geomaterials.