Alexander Shtukenberg was born in St. Petersburg in 1971. He received his diploma in crystallography and mineralogy from the St. Petersburg State University in 1993, and his PhD in 1997. Following postdoctoral fellowships at the Mineralogy and Petrography Institute of the University of Bonn and at the Paul Drude Institute for Solid State Electronics, Berlin, he has returned to his alma mater as an instructor in crystallography. Shtukenberga (TM)s research has focused on the structure and properties of solid solutions. He has published 27 papers in addition to the monograph, Optical Anomalies i...