George Frederick Kunz

George Frederick Kunz was an American mineralogist and mineral collector who developed an early passion for minerals, amassing more than four thousand specimens by his teens. Though he never completed a college degree, he became self-taught in mineralogy and rose to vice president of Tiffany & Co. by the age of twenty-three, gaining recognition for identifying a new gem variety of spodumene that was named kunzite in his honor, and he oversaw the cutting of the Tiffany Yellow Diamond. He served as a special agent for the United States Geological Survey from 1883 to 1909, championed the adoption of the decimal metric system in America, advocated for the international carat as the standard unit for measuring precious gems, and authored more than three hundred articles.