Largest database for chemical analyses of rocks and minerals now hosted at Göttingen University

Geochemistry was established as one of the central pillars of the geosciences by Victor Moritz Goldschmidt in Göttingen. It describes the formation and evolution of our planet, as well as the mass transport processes within the Earth systems. Applications of geochemistry include resource and environmental research. Large data sets are playing an increasingly important role in solving scientific questions in geochemistry. Now the University of Göttingen has inherited GEOROC, the largest geochemical database for rocks and minerals from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry (Mainz). The database has been revised and modernised in its structure and made available to its global users in a new form.

The "GEOROC" database, the largest global data collection of rock and mineral compositions, currently contains analyses from over 20,000 individual publications (the oldest dating back to 1883) from 614,000 samples. Together, these data represent almost 32 million individual analytical values.