Friedrich Mohs

Friedrich Mohs was a German mineralogist, born in 1773 in Gernrode and active in German and Austrian mineralogical institutions until his death in 1839 in Agordo. He created the Mohs scale of mineral hardness, a comparative ten point scale ranking minerals by their ability to scratch one another, which remains the standard field method for estimating a mineral's hardness. He also introduced a classification of crystal forms into crystal systems, developed independently of the parallel classification proposed by Christian Samuel Weiss.