Edward Charles Richard (Graf von) Taaffe (1898–1967), known as Richard, was an Austrian-Irish

gemmologist Gemology or gemmology is the science dealing with natural and artificial gemstone materials. It is a geoscience and a branch of mineralogy. Some jewelers (and many non-jewelers) are academically trained gemologists and are qualified to identify a ...

who found the first cut and polished taaffeite in November 1945.

Biography

Taaffe was born and grew up on the Bohemian estate of Ellischau (today

Nalžovské Hory Nalžovské Hory is a town in Klatovy District in the Plzeň Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 1,200 inhabitants. Administrative parts The municipality is made up of villages of Krutěnice, Letovy, Miřenice, Nalžovy, Neprochovy, Otěš� ...

), the family seat. For a short time, the composer Ralph Benatzky was his tutor. He was the son of Count

Henry Taaffe, 12th Viscount Taaffe Heinrich Graf von Taaffe, 12th Viscount Taaffe (22 May 1872 – 25 July 1928) was an Austrian landowner who until 1919 held hereditary titles from two different countries: he was a Count (''Graf'') in the nobility of Austria and a viscount in the ...

, an Austrian landowner, and Maria Magda Fuchs; his grandfather was the Austrian Prime Minister

Eduard Taaffe Eduard Franz Joseph Graf von Taaffe, 11th Viscount Taaffe (24 February 183329 November 1895) was an Austrian statesman, who served for two terms as Minister-President of Cisleithania, leading cabinets from 1868 to 1870 and 1879 to 1893. He was a ...

. His father had once held

hereditary title Hereditary titles, in a general sense, are nobility titles, positions or styles that are hereditary and thus tend or are bound to remain in particular families. Though both monarchs and nobles usually inherit their titles, the mechanisms often d ...

s from two different countries: he was a Count ('' Graf'') of the Holy Roman Empire and a viscount in the Peerage of Ireland. Richard Taaffe, however, inherited neither the viscountcy, which was suspended by the

Titles Deprivation Act 1917 The Titles Deprivation Act 1917 is an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom which authorised enemies of the United Kingdom during the First World War to be deprived of their British peerages and royal titles. Background The British royal famil ...

in 1919, as his father had served on the Austrian side in World War I, nor the title of Count, as Austria had generally abolished titles of nobility in 1919. Taaffe was nonetheless almost always referred to in English-speaking countries as ''count''. In the years after World War I, Richard Taaffe emigrated to the Irish Free State and worked there as a gemologist. In October 1945, he discovered the very rare mineral Taaffeite (Mg 3 Al 8 BeO 16, also known as Magnesiotaaffeite, 2N'2S ), which was later named after him: Taaffe had a large number of old cut gems obtained from the Dublin jeweller Robert Dobbie, extracted from old jewellery. Upon close examination, Taaffe found that a

spinel Spinel () is the magnesium/aluminium member of the larger spinel group of minerals. It has the formula in the cubic crystal system. Its name comes from the Latin word , which means ''spine'' in reference to its pointed crystals. Properties S ...

-derived purple stone originating from

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...

had a

birefringence Birefringence is the optical property of a material having a refractive index that depends on the polarization and propagation direction of light. These optically anisotropic materials are said to be birefringent (or birefractive). The birefring ...

that was absent in a spinel. Unable to explain this phenomenon, Taaffe sent the stone to B. W. Anderson in the London Chamber of Commerce's laboratory. After extensive analysis, it was finally recognized that the stone was an unidentified mineral, which was confirmed in 1949 by the discovery of a second specimen. With Richard Taaffe's death in 1967, no heirs to either title remained and both the Austrian and the Irish titles became extinct.

References

1898 births 1967 deaths Gemologists Austrian mineralogists People from Klatovy District {{Austria-bio-stub