Prof. Emil Makovicky from the Institute for Geoscience and Natural Resource Management,
University of Copenhagen, is an outstanding crystallographer who has devoted much of his long and distinguished scientific career to bring system and clarity into the world of sulfide minerals, particularly the rare sulfosalts. Sulfides are the major ores for many of the metals we use in everyday life, but their crystal chemistry is quite different from the more common silicates due to the polarizable nature of the S anion. Makovicky, through his extensive study of these minerals, has shown that their structure forms a related homologous series, which can be in turn grouped in to larger structural families. Using his modular approach to classification, he solved approximately 90 crystal structures and identified over 20 new minerals.

Emil Makovicky received his M.Sc. at Comenius University of Bratislava; for his Ph.D. he moved to McGill University, Montreal, Canada. In 1972, after holding two research positions at McGill and Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA, he moved to the University of Copenhagen, where he became Emeritus in 2014.

Emil has received many honours; he is a Member of the Royal Scientific Society of Denmark and the Academia Nazionale dei Lincei (Rome), Fellow of the Mineralogical Society of America, Knight of the order of Dannebrog, and Honorary Member of the Slovak Mineralogical Society. Recently he received a Doctor honoris causa from Comenius University, and he is a recipient of the D. Štur medal (Slovak Geological Survey), the E. Borický medal (Charles University, Prague), the D. Andrusov medal (Comenius University), the Carl Hermann Medal (German Crystallographic Society) and the Friedrich Becke Medal (Austrian Mineralogical Society).

Professor Makovicky has published two books and more than 240 papers in peer-reviewed journals – his work will have a lasting impact on mineralogy and solid state-chemistry.