For a geologist it is important to know not just the chemistry of a given section of the Earth's crust, but its development in historical terms, including the evolution of the chemistry of magmatic formations over time. In other words, dynamic petrochemistry acquires essential importance.

The Mineralogical Society, founded in 1817, throughout its long existence has been closely connected with the Mining Institute, its professors and graduates. In the work of the Mineralogical Society from the first years took part figures of the Mining Institute, in particular Vasily Mikhailovich Severgin and Dmitry Ivanovich Sokolov, who by their works made a very valuable contribution to the development of geological and mineralogical sciences.

We refer only to the main successes achieved by the scientists of the Mining Institute. We shall begin our review with a consideration of the position of the course of petrology at the Mining Institute and the studies of rocks carried out by the scientists in the pre-revolutionary period, and then we shall dwell on the analysis of the works carried out after 1917. From the year of foundation of the Mining Institute (1773) and until the middle of the nineteenth century, no separate course of petrography was taught at the Institute. Usually this or that information about various rocks was given in the general courses of geology. But from the very beginning of the Mining Institute's activity in St. Petersburg, the necessity of creating a cabinet where the rocks that make up the “Earth's crust ” would be collected began to be felt. Such a cabinet under the name of geognostic was created in the walls of the Mining Institute in 1804. In 1830 it was said that “it now contains 1233 pieces” of rocks and minerals, and it was noted that “the collection of lavas and other works of Vesuvius deserves special attention here”.