The mineral lipscombite was first made artificially and then found in nature. It was named after chemist
William Lipscomb by the mineralogist John W. Gruner who first made it artificially. While investigating the stability relations of iron oxides small, black, shiny crystals were obtained when a spherical iron pressure-temperature vessel was contaminated with
phosphorus. The x-ray
powder diffraction pattern was similar to
lazulite, but unknown. Gruner, a mineralogist at the
University of Minnesota, gave Lipscomb, a chemistry professor there, the crystals for Lewis Katz and Lipscomb to determine the atomic structure using
single-crystal x-ray diffraction. They initially called the mineral iron lazulite. ==References==