James Friauf

James Byron Friauf (1896-1972) was an American electrical engineer who first determined the crystal structure of MgZn₂ in 1927, while he was a professor of physics at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, now Carnegie Mellon University. The phase consists of intra-penetrating icosahedra, which coordinate the Zn atoms, and 16-vertex polyhedra that coordinate the Mg atoms. The latter type of polyhedron is called a Friauf polyhedron and is, actually, an inter-penetrating tetrahedron and a 12-vertex truncated polyhedron.