Thermodynamic treatment of mineral equilibria, a topic central to mineralogical thermodynamics, can be traced back to the tum of the century, when J. H. Van't Hoff and his associates pioneered in applying thermodynamics to the mineral assemblages observed in the Stassfurt salt deposit. Although other renowned researchers joined forces to develop the subject - H. E. Boeke even tried to popularize it by giving an overview of the early developments in his "Grundlagen der physikalisch-chemischen Petrographie," Berlin, 1915 - it remained, on the whole, an esoteric subject for the majority of the...