It is with great sadness that we announce that Professor Dr. Klaus Heide, Honorary Member of the German Mineralogical Society (DMG), passed away shortly before his 85th birthday.

From 1971 to 1994, Klaus Heide was a lecturer in glass chemistry at the Otto Schott Institute of Chemistry. He subsequently served as the founding Director and Professor of General and Applied Mineralogy at the Institute of Geosciences of Friedrich Schiller University Jena from 1994 to 2004. Many colleagues know him as the long-standing editor of the journal Chemie der Erde, founded in 1914, a position he held for an extraordinary 40 years. His research on natural and synthetic glasses, meteorites, and salt minerals received widespread international recognition.

With Klaus Heide, we have lost a warm-hearted and much-valued colleague, an inspiring teacher, and a passionate mineralogist.

On behalf of the Jena Mineralogy Group,

Falko Langenhorst