AGRICOLA AND MINING

Georg Bauer, better known by the Latin version of his name Georgius Agricola, is considered the founder of geology as a discipline. His work paved the way for further systematic study of the Earth and of its rocks, minerals, and fossils. He made fundamental contributions to mining geology and metallurgy, mineralogy, structural geology, and paleontology. His ground breaking (pardon the pun) work De Re Metallica and his other works De Ortu et Causis Subterraneorum and De Natura Fossilium may be regarded as the first handbooks on geology, mining and mineralogy as we now know it and Agricola is commonly called the "Father of Mineralogy".

De Re Metallica is well known in the industry and was translated from the first Latin edition of 1556 in 1912 by Herbert Clark Hoover and Lou Henry Hoover. Herbert Hoover is known in Australia for his years as Mine Manager at Sons of Gwalia mine in WA. He went on to become the 31st President of the United States in 1928.

Born in Glauchau, in the province of Saxony in what is now Germany, Agricola studied classics at Leipzig University, taught Latin and Greek for a few years, and then in 1522 began to study medicine, first at Leipzig and then at Bologna and Padua in Italy. He took his degree in 1526 and became a practicing doctor; however, he never seems to have been terribly enthusiastic about his profession, devoting most of his energy to studies of mining and geology. He began practicing medicine at Joachimsthal in 1527.

Joachimsthal was an important mining center of the time, in particular for silver mining. Agricola's geological writings reflect an immense amount of study and first-hand observation, not just of rocks and minerals, but of every aspect of mining technology and practice of the time. Agricola moved in 1536 to the city of Chemnitz, also an important center of the mining industry, and was elected Burgomaster there in 1546. He not only continued his medical practice and his geological studies there, but was appointed to several public and diplomatic posts by Duke Maurice of Saxony, to whom he dedicated his book De Natura Fossilium. He died in 1555, one year before the posthumous publication of De Re Metallica, his greatest work.

De Re Metallica, literally translated, means "On the Nature of Metals," but the word metal had a wider meaning at the time, and meant any mineral. In this book, which remained the standard text on mining for two centuries, Agricola reviewed everything then known about mining, including equipment and machinery, means of finding ores -- he rejected the use of divining-rods and other such magical means -- methods of surveying and digging, assaying ores, smelting, mine administration, and even occupational diseases of miners. The book also contains descriptions of ores and of strata. His book was profusely illustrated. Many of the illustrations on this website come from De Re Metallica and their use is gratefully acknowledged.

Agricola noted that rocks were laid down in definite layers, or strata, and that these layers occurred in a consistent order and could be traced over a wide area. This observation of Agricola's was one of the first contributions to stratigraphic geology, and one that would become important in understanding the arrangement and origins of the rocks of the Earth.

Agricola also wrote the first book on physical geology, De Ortu et Causis Subterraneorum (1546), notable for its descriptions of wind and water as powerful geological forces, and for its explanation of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions as produced by subterranean vapors and gases heated by the Earth's internal heat.

His work represented a major advance over previous writings on rocks and minerals in that it classified them, not alphabetically or by their supposed mystical powers, but by simple physical properties: "Thus minerals have differences which we observe by colour, taste, odour, place of origin, natural strength and weakness, shape, form, and size."

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