Handbook of Iron Meteorites

Their History, Distribution, Composition and Structure
By Vagn F. Buchwald

The Handbook of Iron Meteorites was originally published by the University of California Press in 1975 for the Center for Meteorite Studies at Arizona State University. It has been digitized at the University of Hawai‘i as it is still an extraordinarily valuable resource and is no longer in print. The copyright of this book, which was originally held by the University of California Press, is now owned by the Center for Meteorite Studies. We thank the Director of the Center for Meteorite Studies, Meenakshi Wadhwa, and Vagn Buchwald for giving us their permission to prepare and distribute this electronic version.

This is a monumental book in three volumes containing 1426 pages, 2124 figures, eight appendices and a supplement.

Volume 1 provides a general introduction to meteorites, fireballs, and impact craters and to the mineralogy, composition, and properties of iron meteorites. It also contains appendices of information about iron meteorites.

Volumes 2 and 3 contain descriptions of about 600 iron meteorites—nearly all those that were known and accessible in 1975. These descriptions include information about the structure, mineralogy, and composition of each iron meteorite, its discovery and subsequent history, as well as a list of museum holdings. A guide for users can be found on page 245 at the beginning of Volume 2. At the end of Volume 3 on pages 1376-1418 there is a supplement containing information about eleven meteorites that were studied by Vagn after 1973 plus additional notes and photographs for a few other iron meteorites.

Digitization of the Handbook of Iron Meteorites in 2013 was supported by a grant from the NASA Cosmochemistry program.
Hard copies of the original figures for the book are still available at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen. The figures have been scanned by the Natural History Museum and are now available at much higher resolution than in the original printed copies of the book.

Online version

The scanned version of the Handbook of Iron Meteorites is available here.

High resolution images

High resolution images of figures from the book are available on this search engine link. Please note the copyright information below.

Copyright information

The scanned figures from the Handbook of Iron Meteorites are Copyright of the Natural History Museum of Denmark. The figures may be used free of charge for non-commercial purposes, provided credit is given to the Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen.

Permission to use the figures for commercial purposes may be obtained through collections manager Zina Fihl at the Natural History Museum.