European Mineralogical Union
Medal for Research Excellence
2006
Luca Bindi
 Luca Bindi was born in 1971 in Prato, Italy. He studied at the Department of Earth Sciences of the University of Florence (1991-1996) and obtained the PhD in Mineralogy and Petrology at the same University (1998-2000). His research activity has been carried on with a post-doctoral research position (2000-2004) and subsequently as temporary researcher in Mineralogy (2004-2006). During this period he also had an active scientific collaboration with the scientists of the Division of Mineralogy of the Natural History Museum of Florence.His activity has been mainly devoted to the structural complexity in mineral structures (i.e., incommensurate structures, superstructures, twinned structures), integrating together mineralogy and the most advanced fields of crystallography. His research covers also topics on the description and characterization of new minerals and on the physical and chemical conditions of minerals in the rocks of the mantle (his pioneering studies on K-rich clinopyroxenes had wide international resonance). His work on the characterization of metallic minerals in ore deposits is especially noteworthy among economic geologists. To specifically quote only a few of his more significant contributions, he has demonstrated that large amounts of potassium (up to 5.0 wt. % of K2O) can enter the structure of natural and synthetic clinopyroxenes and has presented and discussed all the implications for the mineralogy of the Earth's deep mantle; he carried out the first five-dimensional crystal structure refinement of a natural material (natural melilite) displaying a two-dimensional incommensurate structure; he demonstrated that some natural silver-sulfosalts (in the pearceite-polybasite group of minerals) are fast ionic conductors and as such may find important technological applications. |
The most impressive features of the activity of Luca Bindi are the breadth of his research and his extraordinary productivity. At thirty-five years of age, Luca Bindi has published his scientific results in more than 60 papers in internationally renowned journals. The excellence of his research has already been nationally recognized, having already been awarded in 2001 with the Award of the Italian Society of Mineralogy and Petrology (SIMP) for the best PhD thesis in the mineralogical and petrologic field, and in 2004 with the Panichi Award of SIMP assigned to young scientists whose research is considered to be outstanding in mineralogical field. Luca Bindi is a productive and talented scientist who has made major advances on various mineralogical problems, has demonstrated an extraordinary scientific insight and has accomplished an amazing amount of original work in a wide variety of areas, from fieldwork to accurate definition of incommensurate structures. Undoubtedly he will continue to give original contributions in the various fields he has investigated. For the relevance and international dimension of his work Luca Bindi is a merited recipient of the EMU Excellence Research Medal for 2006. |