Search Mineralpedia – A Mineral Photo Database and Identification Guide

Named after Antoine Henri Becquerel, the French physicist who discovered radioactivity in 1896. Becquerelite is a rare mineral that occurs as a weathering product of uraninite in oxidized uranium deposits and can also be found, albeit rarely, in pegmatites. Localities include in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Austria, England, France, the United States, Canada, and Australia, among a few others. Becquerelite is highly radioactive.

Ref. Handbook of Mineralogy, Anthony et al (1995) and MSA at http://www.handbookofmineralogy.org/pdfs/becquerelite.pdf

Named to honor Nikolai Vasil’evich Belov, who was a crystallographer and academician and former Head of the Cystallography and Crystallochemistry Department at Moscow Lomonosov State University in Moscow, Russia. Beloveite-Ce is a secondary mineral in pegmatites in localities in the Lovozero and Khibiny massifs in Russia. The only other locality for Belovite is at Gordon Butte in Montana, USA.

Ref. Handbook of Mineralogy, Anthony et al (1995) and MSA at http://www.handbookofmineralogy.org/pdfs/belovite-(Ce).pdf

Dmitry Stepanovich Belyankin is the namesake of Belyankinite as a formerly prominent mineralogist ant petrographer. The type and only locality for Belankinite is at the Medvzh’ya Berloga pegmatite in the Lovozero Massif in the Kola Peninsula in Russia. There, it occurs as inclusions “in aegirine and microcline, in nepheline syenite pegmatite in an alkalic massif, in part probably as a replacement of murmanite.” Other associated minerals include zeolites, eudialyte, lorenzenite, lamprophyllite, and titanium oxides.

Ref. Handbook of Mineralogy, Anthony et al (1995) and MSA at http://www.handbookofmineralogy.org/pdfs/belyankinite.pdf