Historically, mineralogy was heavily concerned with taxonomy of the rock-forming

minerals; to this end, the International Mineralogical Association is an organi

zation whose members represent mineralogists in individual countries. Its activi
ties include managing the naming of minerals (via the Commission of New Minerals
and Mineral Names), location of known minerals, etc. As of 2004 there are over
4,000 species of mineral recognized by the IMA. Of these, perhaps 150 can be cal
led "common," another 50 are "occasional," and the rest are "rare" to "extremely
rare."
More recently, driven by advances in experimental technique (such as neutron dif
fraction) and available computational power, the latter of which has enabled ext
remely accurate atomic-scale simulations of the behaviour of crystals, the scien
ce has branched out to consider more general problems in the fields of inorganic
chemistry and solid-state physics. It, however, retains a focus on the crystal
structures commonly encountered in rock-forming minerals (such as the perovskite
s, clay minerals and framework silicates). In particular, the field has made gre
at advances in the understanding of the relationship between the atomic-scale st
ructure of minerals and their function; in nature, prominent examples would be a
ccurate measurement and prediction of the elastic properties of minerals, which
has led to new insight into seismological behaviour of rocks and depth-related d
iscontinuities in seismograms of the Earth's mantle. To this end, in their focus
on the connection between atomic-scale phenomena and macroscopic properties, th
e mineral sciences (as they are now commonly known) display perhaps more of an o
verlap with materials science than any other discipline.