Dr. Frederick H. Pough, a noted mineralogist, museum curator, and author, died April 7 in Rochester, N.Y. He was 99.

Pough, during his tenure as curator of physical geology and mineralogy at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, wrote A Field Guide to Rocks and Minerals in 1953. The book, considered a definitive volume on the subject of mineralogy, is still in print and, according to the New York Times, has sold more than a million copies to date.

Pough was a consultant and monthly columnist for Lapidary Journal magazine in the 1980s and 1990s, and also was a contributing editor and book reviewer for JCK magazine.