Formula: Ca(WO₄)

Species: Molybdates Sulfates

Colour: Tan, golden-yellow, colourless, white, greenish, dark brown, etc.; colourless in transmitted light

Lustre: Adamantine, Vitreous

Hardness: 4½ – 5

Specific Gravity: 6.1

Crystal System: Tetragonal

Member of: Scheelite Group, Powellite-Scheelite Series.

Name: Named in 1821 by Karl Caesar von Leonhard in honor of Carl Wilhelm Scheele (1742-1786), Swedish experimental chemist and commercial apothecary. His experimental work was monumental for the time period and he discovered chlorine and experimented with oxygen before Joseph Priestley recognized it as an element. He investigated many fundamentally important organic compounds. He proved the existence of tungstic oxide in the mineral now bearing his name in 1781.

Type Locality: Bispbergs Klack, Säter, Dalarna County – Sweden

Isostructural with: Powellite

A primary mineral commonly found as a component of contact-metamorphic tactite; in high-temperature hydrothermal veins and greisen; in granitic pegmatites and medium-temperature hydrothermal veins; in alluvial deposits.