Microscopic petrography with thin sections (Sorby)
Petrografía microscópica con láminas delgadas (Sorby)
- Date
- 1858 · confidence high
- Place
- Sheffield, England, United Kingdom
- Credited to
- Henry Clifton Sorby
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What it is
Sorby adapted the microscope for studying rocks: he polished slices a few hundredths of a millimetre thick, viewed in transmitted and polarised light, and identified minerals, textures and fluid inclusions. In 1858 he published his results on igneous and metamorphic rocks and founded microscopic petrography.
William Nicol had prepared thin sections of fossil wood in the 1820s; Sorby applied them to rocks and developed the technique, which Zirkel and Rosenbusch popularised in Germany.
What it led to
- the microscopic petrology of Zirkel, Rosenbusch and Michel-Lévy
- study of fluid inclusions and formation temperatures