TU Bergakademie Freiberg honored with first-class mineralogical collections

The TU Bergakademie Freiberg now has it in black and white: its mineralogical collections are among the largest and most beautiful of their kind in the world. The Bergakademie recently received this honor at the congress of the International Union of Geological Sciences in South Korea. The TU announced that it was the only mineralogical collection to be ranked among the top eleven geo-collections. The other ten collections were primarily concerned with palaeontology or meteorites.

The Freiberg collections were thus recognized as having global significance and particularly high scientific and historical relevance for the geosciences, it said. The collections were created in connection with the founding of the mining academy in 1765 and comprise around 95,000 mineral specimens in the core area. The collection is not only used for the education of students or as a source for scientific research. As they are open to the public, they are also a magnet for mineral collectors from all over the world.