[6] Stishovite was named after Sergey M. Stishov [ru], a Russian high-pressure physicist who first synthesized the mineral in 1961.

[8] It was long considered the hardest known oxide (~30 GPa Vickers[2]); however, boron suboxide has been discovered[9] in 2002 to be much harder.

[7] Large natural crystals of stishovite are extremely rare and are usually found as clasts of 1 to 2 mm in length.

Until recently, the only known occurrences of stishovite in nature formed at the very high shock pressures (>100 kbar, or 10 GPa) and temperatures (> 1200 °C) present during hypervelocity meteorite impact into quartz-bearing rock.

Minute amounts of stishovite have been found within diamonds,[10] and post-stishovite phases were identified within ultra-high-pressure mantle rocks.