Nevil Story-Maskelyne
The keeper of minerals at the British Museum who built up its meteorite collection and gave his name to maskelynite.
Key facts
- Born
- 1823
- Died
- 1911
- Nationality
- British
- Field
- Mineralogist and curator
Mervyn Herbert Nevil Story-Maskelyne was the grandson of Nevil Maskelyne, the Astronomer Royal. He taught mineralogy at Oxford and in 1857 became keeper of minerals at the British Museum in London, a post he held for about 23 years. He was also one of the early pioneers of photography.
As keeper he greatly enlarged the national meteorite collection, buying and exchanging specimens and making London one of the main centres for meteorite research. He studied the minerals in meteorites carefully and published analyses of several, including an important study of the Busti meteorite from India, in which he described the unusual mineral oldhamite, a calcium sulphide found only in very reduced meteorites.
When Gustav Tschermak found glassy feldspar in the Shergotty meteorite in 1872, he named it maskelynite in Story-Maskelyne's honour. It has since become a key sign of intense shock in meteorites, especially those from Mars.
The collection he enlarged moved with the rest of the natural history collections to the new Natural History Museum in South Kensington in the 1880s. Story-Maskelyne left the museum in 1880 and served as a Member of Parliament for many years.