Moissanite 101
From a Meteorite Crater to a Ring: The History of Moissanite
Discovered in 1893, misidentified as diamond, and unavailable as jewellery for another hundred years.
Written by the Mapple Gems workshop, Surat Β· Updated 22 September 2026
Short answer
The French chemist Henri Moissan found tiny crystals in the Canyon Diablo meteorite crater in Arizona in 1893 and first took them for diamond; they turned out to be silicon carbide, later named moissanite in his honour. Natural moissanite is vanishingly rare β found only in meteorites and a few unusual rock formations β so every moissanite sold as jewellery is laboratory grown. Gem-quality growth only became possible in the 1990s, which is why a stone discovered in the nineteenth century is a modern jewellery material.
Moissanite has an unusually well-documented origin for a gemstone, and knowing it answers most of the questions people actually have about the material.
The timeline
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1893 | Henri Moissan finds crystals at Canyon Diablo, Arizona |
| Initially | Identified as diamond β an understandable error |
| Later | Correctly identified as silicon carbide (SiC) |
| 1906 | Moissan receives the Nobel Prize in Chemistry |
| 20th century | Synthetic SiC used industrially as an abrasive |
| 1990s | Gem-quality growth becomes possible; jewellery use begins |
| Today | Multiple producers; no single-company control |
Note the hundred-year gap. It exists because industrial silicon carbide is easy to make in small, opaque, imperfect crystals and extremely difficult to make in large, clear, near-flawless ones. The material was never rare; gem-quality material was.
Moissan mistook it for diamond β and that first error is still the most useful fact about the material. A trained chemist examining crystals with nineteenth-century instruments concluded he was looking at diamond, because silicon carbide genuinely sits close to it on every property that matters visually: Mohs 9.25 against 10, refractive index 2.65β2.69 against 2.42, both colourless and both extremely hard. The identification was only corrected once the composition could be tested properly. Two things follow from that, and both are honest. First, the resemblance is real and physical rather than a marketing claim β it fooled the person who found it. Second, the property that eventually distinguished it is the same one you can see today: moissanite is doubly refractive where diamond is singly refractive, which is why a loupe shows doubled facet edges, and its dispersion is 0.104 against diamondβs 0.044, which is why a large moissanite throws more rainbow. It was never a copy of diamond. It is a different mineral that happens to look similar β and it was found and named long before anyone thought of selling it in a ring.
Why all jewellery moissanite is grown
Natural moissanite exists, but in quantities that make it a curiosity rather than a supply. It occurs in meteorites and in a small number of unusual terrestrial formations, generally as microscopic inclusions inside other minerals.
There has never been enough natural material to cut a single ring stone commercially. So every moissanite in jewellery is laboratory grown β and unlike lab grown diamond, there is no natural counterpart market to compare against, no legacy pricing structure, and no inherited marketing premium. That is a large part of why it costs what it does.
What the history explains
- Why there are no antique moissanite pieces. The material only became available for jewellery in the 1990s, so a βVictorian moissanite ringβ is a modern stone in an antique-style setting β or an antique setting rebuilt.
- Why it is not graded. The grading system was built around diamond over a century; moissanite arrived recently and no laboratory grades it for colour, clarity or cut on those scales.
- Why cutting standards vary so much. Diamond proportions do not transfer β the refractive index is different and the material is doubly refractive, so the optic axis has to be respected. Cutting conventions for it are decades old, not centuries.
- Why supply is unconstrained. Production capacity, not geology, sets the ceiling.
The βspace diamondβ problem
Because of Canyon Diablo, moissanite is sometimes marketed as a stone from space. It is worth being straight about this: the crystals Moissan found came from a meteorite; the stone in your ring did not. It was grown in a furnace, most likely within the last few years.
The meteorite is the discovery story, not the supply chain. Any seller implying otherwise is selling romance, and it is the kind of romance that makes buyers distrust the rest of what they are told β which is a shame, because the real history is interesting enough without it.
Where it sits now
Early gem moissanite was produced under patent by a single company, and stones from that period often showed a faint green or grey cast. Those patents have since expired, several producers now grow gem-quality material, and colourless output is routine rather than exceptional.
The practical consequence for a buyer is that brand names matter less than they once did, and the checks that matter are the same ones that always did: measured millimetres, rotating video in ordinary light, and the construction specifications of the piece it is set into.
Keep reading
Frequently asked questions
Who discovered moissanite?
The French chemist Henri Moissan, in 1893, in crystals from the Canyon Diablo meteorite crater in Arizona. He first identified them as diamond; they were later shown to be silicon carbide and the mineral was named moissanite in his honour. Moissan received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1906.
Is moissanite from space?
The crystals Moissan found came from a meteorite, but no jewellery stone does. Natural moissanite is vanishingly rare and occurs mostly as microscopic inclusions, so every moissanite sold as jewellery is laboratory grown β the meteorite is the discovery story, not the supply chain.
Why did it take a century to appear in jewellery?
Silicon carbide is easy to produce as small, opaque industrial crystals and very difficult to produce as large, clear, near-flawless ones. Gem-quality growth only became possible in the 1990s, which is why a mineral discovered in 1893 is a modern jewellery material. Antique moissanite pieces therefore do not exist.
Why was it mistaken for diamond?
Because the resemblance is physical: Mohs 9.25 against 10, refractive index 2.65β2.69 against 2.42, both colourless and both extremely hard. The distinguishing properties are that moissanite is doubly refractive, showing doubled facet edges under a loupe, and disperses light more β 0.104 against 0.044.
A different mineral that happens to look similar.
That is the accurate description, and it is a better one than any story about meteorites.
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