Henry Alexander Miers

Sir Henry Alexander Miers ( born May 25, 1858 in Rio de Janeiro, † December 10, 1942 in London) was a British mineralogist.

Life

Miers was born the fifth of eight children in Rio de Janeiro. His father, Charles Francis Miers, was a civil engineer. Just two years after his birth the family moved to England.

1872 Miers received a scholarship to Eton College. From 1877 he studied at Trinity College, Oxford mathematics and crystallography with a bachelor 's degree in 1881. After three months in Strasbourg by Paul Heinrich von Groth Miers received in 1882 a job in the mineralogical department of the British Museum, where he worked until 1895. From 1886 to 1895 he taught in addition crystallography at Central Technical College in London.

From 1895 to 1908, Miers Professor of Mineralogy at Oxford, then to 1915 Rector of the University of London. From 1915 to 1926 he was Professor of Crystallography at the University of Manchester.

1942 Miers died unmarried in London.

He invented a goniometer and wrote an introduction to the mineralogy ( Introduction to Mineralogy 1902). He pointed William Ramsay in 1895 on a gas toward that escaped from cleveite by heating with dilute sulfuric acid. It was later identified as helium.

The mineral Miersit is named after him.