Acknowledgement

The Rock Texture Atlas of GSI was planned by the Dr. S. Raju, the then Additional Director General and presently Director General, Geological Survey of India in April, 2020. It was initiated with approval from Shri. M. Sridhar, Director General (Rtd.) of Geological Survey of India. We express our sincere gratitude to both of them for creating this wonderful opportunity to bring together the disseminated knowledge of large number of geoscientists in one common forum.

The collection of photographs used has been contributed by enthusiastic and active scientists of GSI, all of whom have been acknowledged on their respective photos. We thank you all for your active support without which this collection would never have been possible. We would specially like to mention some of our retired luminaries who have practically contributed their life’s collection of wonderful microphotos for the benefit of budding geoscientists. Dr. Abhinaba Roy, Additional Director General (Rtd.), Dr. Sweta Chattopadhyay, Deputy Director General (Rtd.), Dr. Venkatadasu, Director (Rtd.) and Shri. Prabir Kumar Mukhopadhyay, Deputy Director General (Rtd.) have enriched our collection with their extraordinary collections. We have received excellent photographs from Dr. Bimal Kumar Bandyopadhyay, Deputy Director General (Rtd.) and Dr. M. Fariduddin, Director (Rtd.). At my personal request, Dr. Rajendra Kumar Sharma, Director (Rtd.) had brought his Ph.D. collection of petrographic sections to Wester Region office for photographing for benefit of the mass. Dr. Bodas, Director (Rtd.) and his officers have also contributed a large collection of photos for the pyroclastic section of the Atlas. Our very revered and loved seniors - we thank you all for your admirable contributions.

The collection was further enriched by some specific contributions from Universities. These microphotos were not available from GSI. We are grateful to Professor Pulak Sengupta from Jadavpur University as well as Prof. Dipak C. Pal and Prof. Susanta K. Samanta, also from Jadavpur University for their wonderful microphotos which they happily shared for benefit of all. Dr. M. A. W. Willcock has kindly sent us a few excellent photos of pyroclasts, our thanks to her for this help.

We thank all our reviewers who had put in a huge effort for betterment of our work. We thank Dr. Abhinaba Roy, Prof. Sanjoy Sanyal, Prof. Sankar Bose, Shri. Prabir Kumar Mukhopadhyay, Prof. M. K. Panigrahi, Dr. Aneel D. Shukla and Shri. J. N. Das for their effort, constructive criticisms, suggestions and even addition of information which have immensely improved our work. Our list of course is a growing one. Many of the sections are yet at different stages of preparation that we expect to complete within the next few months.

Professor Sanjay Sanyal from Jadavpur University and Professor Sankar Bose from Presidency University have kindly undertaken the review of the section titled “Textures in Metamorphic Rocks”. This section contains a writeup with 139 microphotos as illustrations. We have been enriched by the invaluable comments of the reviewers both with respect to writeup and microphoto captions. Dr. Kasturi Chakraborty, Director and Smt. Susmita Mondol, Senior Geologist, as compilers of this section, express our sincere gratitude for Dr. Sanjay Sanyal and Dr. Sankar Bose.

Dr. Abhinaba Roy, Additional Director General (Rtd.) have undertaken the review of two sections titled “Deformation related Microstructures” and “Vugs, Veins and Pseudotachylyte”. The former section has 152 illustrations while the later contains 54 photos. Many of these photos have been contributed by Dr. Roy himself. We thank Dr. Abhinaba Roy for his scrutiny and many valuable comments which helped us to immensely enrich our work.

Shri. Prabir Kumar Mukhopadhyay, Deputy Director General (Rtd.) has not only critically reviewed the section “Textures in Pyroclastic Rocks”, but also prepared complimentary write-ups to enrich the section. We are immensely thankful to Shri. Prabir Kumar Mukhopadhyay for his help.

Dr. Aneel D. Shukla, Scientist SF, PRL, Ahmedabad has kindly undertaken review of the sections “Textures in Chondritic Meteorites” and “Textures related to Shock Metamorphism”. Dr. Arindam Dutta, as compiler of these two sections and Dr. Kasturi Chakraborty, as Coordinator of the Project are thankful to Dr. Shukla for his critical and review. Dr. Arindam Dutta also expresses his deep gratitude to Dr. M. Raju, Additional Director General (Retd.), Shri. G. Vidyasagar, Additional Director General (Retd.) and Shri.T.S. Pangtey, Additional Director General(Retd.) for their administrative support, guidance and suggestion during the period of project execution when these photos were collected. The author/compiler is grateful to Shri. A. P. Rai, Dy. Director General, M-IV C (FGS), Dr. K. Jayabalan, Dy. Director General (Retd.), M-IV A, and Dr. G. Suresh, Deputy Director General (Retd.) for their technical guidance and administrative support. Dr. Arindum Dutta also acknowledges the contributions of Shri. Basab Chattopadhay, Deputy Director General (Retd.), who had motivated and guided with his technical knowledge, suggestions and encouragement. The technical contributions of Sh. Anindya Bhattacharya, Director, GSI, SU: K&G, Bengaluru, Dr.Kasturi Chakraborty, Director, GSI, WR, Jaipur, Ms. Debjani Raychaudhuri, Sr. Geologist, GSI, CHQ, Kolkata and Smt. Debdatta Basu, Sr. Geologist, GSI, CHQ, Kolkata are duly acknowledged.

Dr. Bashab Nandan Mahanta and Dr. Omnath Saha thank all the contributors for the brilliant photographs used in this chapter. We are grateful to Professor Uma Kanta Shukla from Benaras Hindu University who have taken the pain to go through the Sedimentary Petrography section and enrich us with his valuable comments.

Dr. Trisrota Chowdhury, the compiler of Igneous Petrography Chapter, and Dr. Kasturi Chakraborty express heartfelt thanks to Professor Biswajit Ghosh from Calcutta University for under taking the review of the Igneous Petrogaphy section. At present Dr. Ghosh is also reviewing our Ore Petrography Chapter along with Dr. Sweta Chattopadhyay, DDG (Rtd). We are grateful to both of them for their sincere efforts and knowledgeable comments. Dr. Chalapathi Rao has kindly accepted to review the Alkaline Igneous Rock Chapter. We are indebted to him for this help. Dr. Girish Mayachar and Dr. Kasturi Chakraborty also thank Dr. Mruganka Panigrahi, Professor, Kharagpur IIT who have thoroughly reviewed the Fluid Inclusion Petrography chapter and helped us with his expertise.

At the very inception of our work, Shri. Debkumar Chattopadhyay, Deputy Director General, had taken an active interest and helped us to begin our work in coordination with IT Group who designed the webpage. The work would have been impossible without this support. Finally, when the first part of the work is nearing its completion, we are receiving much help and advice from Dr. Santanu Bhattacharya, Deputy Director General, M-III, CHQ. Dr. Bhattacharya has additionally contributed a large number of photographs for the atlas. We thank Shri. Debkumar Chattopadhyay and Dr. Santanu Bhattacharya for their help.

Ms. Sayoni Mitra, the compiler of Gemstones section and Dr. Kasturi Charkraborty are both grateful to Dr. R.V. Karanth, Retired proffessor of University of Baroda, Gujarat for kindly undertaking the review of the Gemstones section and providing with valuable feedback and some very important and necessary photographs.

Finally we would like to thank our IT team and Mission –III officers who have helped in webpage designing and uploading of this work. Without their utmost effort, this Atlas would never have been possible.