Fluorescence, the generation of visible light in color via stimulation of ultraviolet radiation, is widely appreciated in mineral museum displays. Robbins's highly readable treatise for mineral collectors and mineralogists begins with an explanation of the terms and dimensions of mineral luminescence and with an overview of activators, the trace elements responsible for inducing fluorescence in minerals. Principal chapters cover gemstones and specific mineral species and their fluorescent colors, activators, and source localities. A major section of the book provides an extensive catalog and description of the fluorescent minerals and their collecting localities. A final chapter concerns a group of interesting laboratory experiments with the nature of light, mineral fluorescence, and crystals. Color plates include 48 excellent photographs of minerals under ultraviolet light. There is a complete bibliography on mineral fluorescence and an index of minerals and localities. The book is well suited to undergraduate geoscience students and to mineral collectors among the general readership, and it is more thorough than Robbins's earlier The collector's Book of Fluorescent Minerals.... -- Choice, September, 1994

Suitable for mineral collectors, gemologists, lapidaries, and inspired amateurs, this book describes how and where to find fluorescent specimens. it details the properties of known fluorescent minerals, including the entire spectrum of colors. -- Geotimes, September 1995