From the coalfields of northern England to the Arctic snow and steamy jungles of Brazil, diamond hunter and prospector Graham Pearson has carved a name for himself now living in rock.
Pearson, a mantle geochemist with the University of Alberta in Edmonton, has had a new mineral – Grahampearsonite – approved by the International Mineralogical Society.
He has a lifetime of work in diamonds, including his work in Brazil, where he and a team made discoveries more than a decade ago that helped explain, through deep-mined diamonds, the composition and water content of Earth’s deep mantle.
“The most lasting legacy of our work as scientists is actually the data we produce … but those ideas are modified,” Pearson said in a recent interview.
“So if you’re lucky enough to have a mineral named after you, that’s not going to change.
“(And) we’re going to run out of new minerals soon. So it’s very humbling to think that one of those minerals found is named after me.”
Grahampearsonite is known chemically as calcium pyrophosphate, which can be found in toothpaste abrasives.
But Grahampearsonite is the real deal – discovered inside a diamond that crystallized at depths greater than 300 kilometers below the Earth’s surface in the Juina region of Brazil.
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It received its official name in December.
“It may be mysterious, but it’s really beautiful,” he said, pointing to a Grahampearson diagram, which is made of calcium and diphosphorus. The diagram shows oxygen flowing between chemicals.
“Only natural minerals can be named (after a person),” Pearson said.
And someone has to discover it, put in a huge amount of work to characterize it, justify its namesake, and then get it approved by the International Mineralogical Society.
“The association decides whether what (researchers have done) is good enough and strong enough to warrant naming a new mineral,” Pearson said.
Pearson is a pioneer in diamond prospecting.
In addition to mapping the history of the Earth’s mantle, Pearson has developed new techniques for geochemical analysis and pioneered methods for dating small geological samples.
Born in the United Kingdom, he grew up in an English mining town called Pontefract. “I was surrounded by mining products,” he said.
And similar to the formation of diamonds, he said his love for the mineral was also a slow burn. His PhD advisor, who was researching a rare graphite mineral from Morocco that was once a diamond, piqued his interest.
“That got me into the world of diamonds and studying the deep earth,” he said.
In 2010, he moved to Canada to work at the University of Alberta. He founded the world-class Arctic Resources Geochemistry Laboratory.
He continues to explore for minerals and diamonds in the Arctic.
He said continued discovery of minerals is important.
“It’s hard to predict what applications some of these synthetic minerals have until you discover them,” he said.
“And I’m a natural scientist, and something made synthetically just doesn’t have the same allure. The whole story it tells is that somebody put these elements together in a lab and cooked them up.”
He said most people like the look of diamonds because they sparkle, but he said there is much more to them.
“It’s capable of trapping residual pressures within it that no other mineral is capable of,” he said. “That’s what gives it the ability to hold these parts of the deep Earth … Those elements are also able to tell us amazing things about plate tectonic cycles.”
He said advances in microscope technology have also made it easier to identify new minerals, and humanity will eventually discover all the minerals Earth has to offer.
We’re almost halfway there.
“About 4,800 minerals have been discovered,” he said.
“There are about 4,000 more probably waiting to be discovered.”
&copies 2026 The Canadian Press
