It was eminent Nobel Prize winner Dr. Ferdinand Henri Moissan who discovered moissanite in its natural form hence the name “Moissanite’. Actually he found traces of natural moissanite in a meteorite that had crashed in the Arizona desert thousands of years ago. It was in 1893 at Diablo Canyon that he formally revealed this wonderful mineral. The quality that makes moissanite special is its hardness. Surprisingly it is as hard as a diamond. When tested for hardness on the Mohs scale it measures 9.25 as compared to 10 of a diamond. Thus a moissanite has almost all the qualities of a diamond but unlike the diamond it is affordable.

When moissanite was first discovered it created a furor in the jewelry market because of its similarities with the diamond. Many thought that it would ultimately replace diamond in terms of quality and price. It is a fact that
even experienced jewelry experts would find it difficult to identify a moissanite from a diamond without the help of proper equipment. The thermal conductivity and molecular structure of a natural moissanite matches that of a diamond. People consider the diamond to be their most treasured gemstone but moissanite has proved to be more than a match for it.

After the initial ripple things became much clearer later on when it was found that natural moissanite which is only available in minute sizes in its natural state is not that useful for making jewelry items. Moreover the synthetic version of moissanite does not have much demand and with the invention of better equipments it was no longer difficult to test the difference between moissanite and diamond. Even then moissanite has emerged as the most popular stone after diamond. The color is usually crystalline or green and is transparent and comes in hexagonal or trigonal shapes.