Education : Swedish mineral name challenge (original) (raw)
Van here we go…
First a link to the "type description", or better original report, which is actually just a short note by Berzelius in his Årsberättelse om framstegen i fysik, kemi och mineralogi :
in translation something like this:
"A. F. Svanberg and C. Tenger have to the Science Academy Museum announced that they have found a new mineral from the Ytterby feldspar quarry. It is carbonated earth of yttria. It occurs mostly as thin white crusts, which in recent years has been found in the cracks of gadolinite, but it has also occurred in another association, in so thick masses, that one has been able to investigate it. Sometimes one sees signs of a radial crystallization." So far the "type description" or better original report.
It seems likely that both the mineralogical museum in Uppsala and the one in Stockholm should have something that we could designate as "original material".
Tenger then was hard to find anything on to begin with.
Eventually, I found two independent genealogies of the Tenger family and it seems they all stem from Västervik where the men mainly have been merchants and/or merchant skippers or marine officers.
I found 12 men with the initial letter C in one of their names, 10 were named Christian.
But only three candidates had the "right" age, they are closely related as the fathers of 1 and 2 and the grandfather of 3 are all brothers:
1. Christian Tenger 1794 - 1859, Merchant in Västervik
2. Anders Christian Tenger 1800 - 1842, Lieutenant, living in Ödeshög parish
3. Magnus Christian Tenger 1806 - 1862, Lieutenant, ”help-teacher” in chemistry, later director of the agricultural college in Orup, Skåne
No 1 only fits in age - no other correlation.
It turned out that nr 2 is the one who wrote to Berzelius the letters are now in the academy archives and there is nothing in them that suggests that he has anything to do with minerals.
I found a short biographical note on no 3, and it turned out that he was "repetitör i Chemie" at the artillery grammar School Marieberg near Stockholm from 1835-1837. Moreover I found out that Adolf Ferdinand Svanberg became teacher in mechanics and mathematics at the same place in 1835.
That is all I have but it seems to be a pretty strong case for no 3.
I will let you know if I find anything more.
Happy New Year everybody!