Georgius Agricola

Georg Agricola redirects here. For the German widen the range of his observations. The citizens showed
physician and botanist, see Georg Andreas Agricola.
their appreciation of his learning by appointing him town
physician in 1533. In that year, he published a book about
Georgius Agricola (/rkl/; 24 March 1494 21 Greek and Roman weights and measures, De Mensuis et
Ponderibus.
November 1555) was a German Catholic, scholar and scientist. Known as the father of mineralogy", he was born He was also elected burgomaster of Chemnitz. His popuat Glauchau in Saxony. His birth name was Georg Pawer larity was, however, short-lived. Chemnitz was a violent
(Bauer in modern German);[1] Agricola is the Latinized centre of the Protestant movement, while Agricola never
version of his name, by which he was known his entire wavered in his allegiance to the Roman Catholic Church;
adult life; Agricola and Bauer mean farmer in their re- he was forced to resign his oce. He now lived apart
spective languages. He is best known for his book De Re from the contentious movements of the time, devoting
Metallica (1556).
himself wholly to learning. His chief interest was still
in mineralogy, but he occupied himself also with medical, mathematical, theological and historical subjects,
his chief historical work being the Dominatores Saxonici
1 Life and work
a prima origine ad hanc aetatem, published at Freiberg.
In 1544, he published the De ortu et causis subterraneorum,
in which he laid the rst foundations of a physiGifted with a precocious intellect, Georg early threw himcal
geology,
and criticized the theories of the ancients.
self into the pursuit of the "new learning", with such
However,
he
maintained that a certain 'materia pinguis
eect that at the age of 20, he was appointed Rector
or
'fatty
matter,'
set into fermentation by heat, gave birth
extraordinarius of Greek at the so-called Great School
to
fossil
organic
shapes,
as opposed to fossil shells having
of Zwickau, and made his appearance as a writer on
[2]
belonged
to
living
animals.
In 1545, he followed with
philology. After two years, he gave up his appointment to
the
De
natura
eorum
quae
euunt
e terra; in 1546 the De
pursue his studies at Leipzig, where, as rector, he received
veteribus
et
novis
metallis,
a
comprehensive
account of the
the support of the professor of classics, Peter Mosellanus
discovery
and
occurrence
of
minerals
and
also
more com(14931525), a celebrated humanist of the time, with
monly
known
as
De
Natura
Fossilium;
in
1548,
the De
whom he had already been in correspondence. Here, he
animantibus
subterraneis;
and
in
the
two
following
years
also devoted himself to the study of medicine, physics,
a
number
of
smaller
works
on
the
metals.
and chemistry. After the death of Mosellanus, he went
to Italy from 1524 to 1526, where he took his doctors
degree.
He returned to Zwickau in 1527, and was chosen as town
physician at Joachimsthal, a centre of mining and smelting works, his object being partly to ll in the gaps in
the art of healing, and partly to test what had been written about mineralogy by careful observation of ores and
the methods of their treatment. His thorough grounding
in philology and philosophy had accustomed him to systematic thinking, and this enabled him to construct out of
his studies and observations of minerals a logical system
which he began to publish in 1528. Agricolas dialogue
Bermannus, sive de re metallica dialogus [Bermannus; or
a dialogue on metallurgy], (1530) the rst attempt to reduce to scientic order the knowledge won by practical
work, brought Agricola into notice; it contained an approving letter from Erasmus at the beginning of the book.

De re metallica

Main article: De re metallica

His most famous work, the De re metallica libri xii long

remained a standard work, and marks its author as one
of the most accomplished chemists of his time. It was
published the year after his death, in 1556, though apparently nished in 1550, since the dedication to the elector
and his brother is dated 1550. The delay in publication
is thought to be due to the time necessary to complete
the books many woodcuts. The work is a complete and
systematic treatise on mining and extractive metallurgy,
In 1530, Prince Maurice of Saxony appointed him illustrated with many ne and interesting woodcuts which
historiographer with an annual allowance, and he mi- illustrate every conceivable process to extract ores from
grated to Chemnitz, the centre of the mining industry, to the ground and metal from the ore, and more besides.
1

DE RE METALLICA

De re metallica
A water mill used for raising ore

He acknowledged his debt to ancient authors, such as

Pliny the Elder and Theophrastus. Until that time, Plinys
work Historia Naturalis was the main source of information on metals and mining techniques, and Agricola made
numerous references to the Roman encyclopedia.
Agricola described and illustrated how ore veins occur in
and on the ground, making the work an early contribution to the developing science of geology. He described
prospecting for ore veins and surveying in great detail, as
well as washing the ores to collect the heavier valuable
minerals, such as gold and tin.
The work is also interesting for showing the many water
mills used in mining, such as the machine for lifting men
and material into and out of a mine shaft. Water mills
found innumerable applications, especially in crushing
ores to release the ne particles of gold and other heavy
minerals, as well as working giant bellows to force air into
the conned spaces of underground workings.
He described many mining methods which are now obsolete, such as re-setting, which involved building res
against hard rock faces. The hot rock was quenched with
water, and the thermal shock weakened it enough for easy
removal. It was very dangerous when used in underground galleries for the toxic gases given o by res, and
it was made redundant by explosives.

Fire-setting underground

ern words that derive from the work include uorspar

(from which was later named uorine) and bismuth.
In another example, believing the black rock of the
Schloberg at Stolpen to be the same as Pliny the Elder's
basalt, Agricola applied this name to it, and thus origThe work contains, in an appendix, the German equiva- inated a petrological term which has been permanently
lents for the technical terms used in the Latin text. Mod- incorporated in the vocabulary of science.

3
De re metallica is considered a classic document of
Renaissance metallurgy, unsurpassed for two centuries.
In 1912, the Mining Magazine (London) published an English translation. The translation was made by Herbert
Hoover, then an American mining engineer (better
known to history for his later term as a President of the
United States), and his wife Lou Henry Hoover.

Final days

See also
List of mineralogists
Pliny the Elder
Shen Kuo an 11th-century Chinese statesman who
wrote a theory of land formation involving mineralogy

Mineral collecting

References

[1] http://www.georgius-agricola.de/leben.htm
Forschungszentrum Chemnitz

Agricola

[2] Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology, 1832, p.29

This article incorporates text from a publication now

in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911).
Encyclopdia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge
University Press.

De Re Metallica

Agricolas work on gemstones and mineralogy: De

Natura Fossilium, translated from Latin by Mark
Chance Bandy
Agricola Akademischer Verein, German traditional
Fraternity, with the name of the famous scientist.
Agricolas De Re Metallica translated by former
President H. Hoover and his wife L.H. Hoover, full
text (650 pages) and illustrations
George Agricola short article from the Catholic
Encyclopedia, 1907
Wilsdorf, Helmut (1970). Agricola, Georgius.
Dictionary of Scientic Biography 1. New York:
Charles Scribners Sons. pp. 7779. ISBN 0-68410114-9. Digitized version.
Online Galleries, History of Science Collections,
University of Oklahoma Libraries High resolution
images of works by and/or portraits of Georgius
Agricola in .jpg and .ti format.
Works by Georgius Agricola at Project Gutenberg
Works by or about Georgius Agricola at Internet
Archive (optimized for the non-Beta site)

Theophrastus

7 External links
Weisstein, Eric W., Agricola, Georgius (14941555)
from ScienceWorld.

In spite of the early proof that Agricola had given of the

tolerance of his own religious attitude, he was not suffered to end his days in peace. He remained to the end a
staunch Catholic, though all Chemnitz had gone over to
the Lutheran creed, and it is said that his life was ended by
a t of apoplexy brought on by a heated discussion with a
Protestant divine. He died in Chemnitz on 21 November
1555; so violent was the theological feeling against him,
he was not allowed to be buried in the town to which he
had added such lustre. Amidst hostile demonstrations,
he was carried to Zeitz, some 50 kilometers away, and
buried there.

Ralf Kern (2010). Wissenschaftliche Instrumente in

ihrer Zeit. Vol. 1. pp. 334336 (Cologne: Koenig).

Further reading
Carolyn Merchant (1980). The Death of Nature:
Women, Ecology and the Scientic Revolution (San
Francisco: HarperCollins).

8 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

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Georgius Agricola Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgius%20Agricola?oldid=648296678 Contributors: Magnus Manske, Malcolm Farmer, Olivier, Michael Hardy, Minesweeper, Ahoerstemeier, Stan Shebs, Den fjttrade ankan, JASpencer, Marc Tobias Wenzel,
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