In later years he devoted himself largely to petrology, and published memoirs on the trachytes of Hungary and Transylvania; on a new method of determining the species of feldspars in rocks, depending on fusibility and flame-coloration; on the geology and petrology of the district of Schemnitz; and on Santorin Island.
After completion of legal studies, von Rittinger studied in the Montanist box at the Mining and Forestry Academy in Schemnitz (Banská Štiavnica, Slovakia).