Jakub Plášil: Uncovering hidden patterns and unknown substances is exciting

The world's leading mineralogist Jakub Plášil has been unravelling complex crystal structures and discovering new minerals for years. At first glance, it might seem that this is a marginal area of science that is not "in vogue" today. Yet Plášil and his colleagues are making discoveries that have broader implications – for example, in understanding how uranium and other metallic elements are distributed in nature. His research has won him an award by the European Mineralogical Union.

When you say mineralogy, people often think of the showcases at the National Museum. Is it a pleasure for you to walk among them?

I've loved it since I was a child. I used to go there with my parents and always only to the mineralogical collections (laughs). At that time, the others were beyond my interest. I had the opportunity to see the collections during the reconstruction of the building. They were moved to the depositories of the museum in Horní Počernice, and my colleagues spent an impressive amount of time cleaning them, preserving them and then re-arranging and selecting minerals for the newly arranged permanent exhibition. But I must admit that after the reconstruction I have only been there once, although I have been cooperating with the National Museum in research for a long time. When I have a spare moment, I prefer to go for a walk in the forest and take pictures to get a completely different impetus, otherwise I would be surrounded by "rocks" all the time.

In July, you will receive the European Mineralogical Union's major award – the EMU Research Excellence Medal 2024. Were you surprised to hear that you will get the award?

Honestly, I didn't expect it, because I'm involved in things that are not exactly mainstream. Surely, I do transdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research in classical crystallography, but many people consider it as obsolete. And we don't advertise too much that we perform top-quality research, so I didn't expect anyone in the world to notice.

The whole interview can be found here.