Gemologist

The sci­ence of ge­m­o­logy is the study of the ori­gins and prop­er­ties of pre­cious and semi-pre­cious stones. In fact, it de­tails cri­ter­ia for gem­stone dia­gnostics and clas­si­fic­a­tion. The first “proto-ge­m­o­lo­gists” some­times are as­so­ci­ated with the be­gin­ning of an­cient Egyp­tian civil­iz­a­tion, in about 4000 BC. However, ge­m­o­logy is con­sidered to be a rather “young” field of know­ledge. Cur­rent ge­m­o­logy meth­ods use pre­cise, high-tech equip­ment and are en­tirely dif­fer­ent from an­cient meth­ods.

Ge­m­o­lo­gists are able to identi­fy gem­stones and their ori­gin, de­pos­it loc­a­tions, and typ­ic­al min­er­als’ fea­tures. They also re­search new ways to re­fine the pro­cessing and to en­hance the qual­ity of ma­ter­i­als used to cre­ate jew­elry. Ge­m­o­lo­gists search for new, pre­vi­ously un­known pre­cious stones and also widen the spec­trum of use for known min­er­als. By study­ing the struc­ture and prop­er­ties of ar­ti­fi­cial stones, ge­m­o­lo­gists try to im­prove char­ac­ter­ist­ics of ex­ist­ing stones and to cre­ate new tech­no­lo­gies of min­er­al syn­thes­is.

In the past, ge­m­o­lo­gists eval­u­ated only the qual­ity of a pre­cious stone, but they now de­term­ine the pur­ity of the stone as well. The price of a genu­ine stone can be dozens, hun­dreds, or even a thou­sand times high­er than the price of an ar­ti­fi­cial one. For this reas­on, it is im­port­ant to veri­fy a stone's pur­ity be­fore pur­chas­ing it. Usu­ally, the pur­chase of a genu­ine stone in­cludes a cer­ti­fic­ate which states the pur­ity of the stone.