Rosenbusch, Karl Heinrich Ferdinand

Born June 24, 1836, in Einbeck, near Hanover, in what is now the Federal Republic of Germany; died Jan. 20, 1914, in Heidelberg. German petrographer and geologist.

Rosenbusch studied at the universities of Göttingen and Heidelberg and earned the degree of doctor of philosophy in 1869 at the Freiberg Mining Academy. In 1873 he became a professor of mineralogy and geology at the University of Strasbourg; from 1878 to 1908 he was a professor at the University of Heidelberg. In 1888 he founded and became director of the geological survey of Baden.

Rosenbusch’s principal works dealt with study of the micro-structural characteristics of rocks. He developed a physico-optical method of identifying minerals in sections and refined the polarizing microscope. He described a microscopic method of studying rocks (1873). Rosenbusch considered the crystallization of magma to be the main cause of variation in igneous rocks. He identified different types of rock metamorphism and proposed the term “dynamometamorphism” (1886). In 1887 a rare mineral from the fluorosilicate group was named rosenbus-chite in his honor; its formula is NaCa₂(Zr,Ti)Si₂O₈F.