Smithsonite: A Mineral Named for James Smithson

Pictured above is smithsonite, a zinc carbonate mineral that was named after James Smithson (c. 1765–1829), a British chemist, mineralogist, and the founding donor of the Smithsonian Institution.

Smithson became interested in the natural sciences during a period when chemistry was developing into a new science in the late 1700s. He focused on discovering the basic elements, and he collected mineral and ore samples from European countries.

Smithson was one of the first researchers to systematically categorize calamine—or zinc as it was later called. In 1832, three years after Smithson’s death, French mineralogist François Sulpice Beudant named the zinc carbonate mineral smithsonite after Smithson.

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History holds many smithsonite specimens from all over the world. The smithsonite specimen above is from New Mexico’s Kelly Mine, a deposit famed for producing exhibit-quality slabs of bright blue smithsonite. Smithsonite comes in a variety of colors, including greens, purplish pinks and yellows.

Smithson never set foot in the U.S., and it does not appear he corresponded with anyone in the country, so his motive to leave his estate “to the United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge” remains a mystery.