Yuriy . Litvin: Died Dec 7, 2023
Born Feb 28, 1937
Yuriy A. Litvin D.Sc. (Chemistry and Geochemistry) was a Professor and major scientific researcher at the Mantle Laboratory of the Korzhinskii Institute of Experimental Mineralogy (Russian Academy of Sciences) in Chernogolovka. His scientific interests included the physical geochemistry of the Earth’s mantle, genetic mineralogy of diamond and paragenetic inclusions, and experimental study of multicomponent multiphase mantle systems. His principal scientific findings concerned the physico-chemical mechanisms of diamond formation in metal-carbon and carbonate-carbon systems; peritectic reactions of orthopyroxene and olivine (upper mantle), ringwoodite (transition zone) and bridgmanite (lower mantle – “stishovite paradox”); the physico-chemical foundations of the ultrabasic-basic evolution of mantle magmas and diamond-parental melts; and the mantle-carbonatite theory of diamond genesis. He is the author of several books: Physico-chemical studies of the Earth’s deep substance melting (1991); Experimental studies of carbonate-silicate systems of the mantle in the context of the problem of diamond formation (2011); Genesis of diamonds and associated phases (2017); and Evolution of magmatic and diamond-forming systems of the Earth’s lower mantle (2019).
In 2020, with his colleague Oleg Safonov, he edited a special book publication entitled: Advances in Experimental and Genetic Mineralogy, Special Publication to 50th Anniversary of DS Korzhhinskii Institute of Experimental Mineralogy of the Russian Academy of Sciences,Springer. Litvin’s last paper was published in Minerals in August 2023 entitled: The Peritectic Reaction of Olivine as the Mechanism of the Ultrabasic–Basic Evolution of the Diamond-Forming Silicate-Carbonate-(C-O-H) System: Experiments at 6.0 GPa, By Y. A. Litvin, A. V. Kuyura and A. V. Spivak. In the course of writing this paper, Litvin wrote to me asking to confirm a quotation from the book by H.S. Yoder on Generation of Basatic Magma.
