Leifite

Leifite is a rare tectosilicate. Tectosilicates are built on a framework of tetrahedra with silicon or aluminium at the centre and oxygen at the vertices; they include feldspars and zeolites, but leifite does not belong in either of these categories. It is a member of the leifite group, which includes telyushenkoite (Cs,Na,K)Na₆(Be₂Al₃Si₁₅O₃₉) and eirikite KNa₆Be₂(Si₁₅Al₃)O₃₉F₂. Leifite was discovered in 1915, and named after Leif Ericson who was a Norse explorer who lived around 1000 AD, and was probably the first European to land in North America, nearly 500 years before Christopher Columbus. Eirikite was named in 2007 after Eirik Raude, or Erik the Red, (950–1003), who discovered Greenland and who was the father of Leif Ericson. The third mineral in the group, telyushenkoite, was discovered in 2001. It was not named after any of Leif Ericson's family members, but after a professor of geology in Turkmenistan.