According to Frederick H. Pough, one of North American's greatest mineralogists, only Mineralogy among the basic sciences is an educational pass-time because it combines Chemistry, Physics, and Mathematics.

Mineralogy is the science that refers to the study of minerals, whose scope is based on Chemistry, Physics, and Mathematics. In the last decades, mineralogy has been showing an ever closer relationship to Chemistry and Physics, becoming an increasingly quantitative science, through knowledge coming from modern analytical methods such as X-ray diffraction, electronic microwave, electron microscopy, among others.

The science of minerals has a direct relationship, without the Earth sciences, mainly with regards to Petrology, Geochemistry, Gephysics, Planetary Geology, Geotectonics, Structural Geology, Environmental Geology, and Economic Geology.



Mineralogy, in its broadest sense, consists of subdisciplines such as crystallography, crystallochemistry, mineral taxonomy, paragenesis and their geological occurrences.