Lyudmila Gorogotskaya (1935–2005)

Lyudmila Gorogotskaya, well-known investigator of mineral structures, died of cancer on January 4, 2005, one month before her seventieth birthday.

Lyudmila Gorogotskaya graduated from the crystallography professorship course of the Moscow University where she was a follower of Prof. G.B. Bokii. In 1967 she took the Doctor’s degree for her thesis ‘Crystal structures of singenite and chukhrovite, their niche in structural classification of sulfates’.

For most of her life she worked at the Kiev Institute of Geochemistry and Physics of Minerals of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, at the experimental mineralogy department. She was engaged in synthesis of minerals and their analogues and studies of their crystal structures. She determined the crystal structures of new minerals, such as X-andalusite and ceisestibantite, and studied novel layer silica modification by powder diffraction to prove their structural individuality and develop structure models.

She published over 80 papers on crystallography and structural mineralogy in leading scientific publications of the USSR, Russia, and Ukraine.

Lyudmila was keen on gymnastics and took a great interest in philosophic systems of physical and moral improvement. She had a happy family and a lot of friends.

Her relatives, friends, and colleagues from Moscow, Kiev, Novosibirsk, and Kharkov will always have affectionate memories of Lyudmila Gorogotskaya – Lyusi (for friends and relatives).