22 Facts About Georgius Agricola

Georgius Agricola was a German Humanist scholar, mineralogist and metallurgist.

Georgius Agricola was the first to drop the Arabic definite article al-, exclusively writing chymia and chymista in describing activity that we today would characterize as chemical or alchemical, giving chemistry its modern name.

Georgius Agricola is well known for his pioneering work De re metallica libri XII, that was published in 1556, one year after his death.

Georgius Agricola published over 40 complete scholarly works during his professional life on a wide range of subjects and disciplines, such as pedagogy, medicine, metrology, mercantilism, pharmacy, philosophy, geology, history, and many more.

Georgius Agricola is often, although not universally referred to as "the Father of mineralogy" and the founder of geology as a scientific discipline.

Georgius Agricola was baptized with his birth name Georg Pawer.

Georgius Agricola was born in 1494 as Georg Pawer, the second of seven children of a clothier and dyer in Glauchau.

Georgius Agricola received his first Latin lectures under Petrus Mosellanus, a celebrated humanist of the time and adherent of Erasmus of Rotterdam.

Gifted with a precocious intellect and his freshly acquired title of Baccalaureus artium, Georgius Agricola early threw himself into the pursuit of the "new learning", with such effect that at the age of 24 he was appointed Rector extraordinarius of Ancient Greek at the 1519 established Zwickau Greek school, which was to be united with the Great School of Zwickau.

Georgius Agricola subscribed to the studies of medicine, physics, and chemistry.

At the time of Georgius Agricola's visit, the business was run by Andrea Torresani and his daughter Maria.

Georgius Agricola participated in the edition of a work in several volumes on Galen until 1526.

Georgius Agricola returned to Zwickau in 1527 and to Chemnitz in autumn of the same year, where he married Anna Meyner, a widow from Schneeberg.

Georgius Agricola constructed a logical system of the local conditions, rocks and sediments, the minerals and ores, explained the various terms of general and specific local territorial features.

Georgius Agricola combined this discourse on all natural aspects with a treatise on the actual mining, the methods and processes, local extraction variants, the differences and oddities he had learnt from the miners.

Georgius Agricola laid out the whole process in a scholarly dialogue and published it under the title Bermannus, sive de re metallica dialogus, in 1530.

Georgius Agricola served as Burgomaster of Chemnitz in 1546,1547,1551 and 1553.

Georgius Agricola acknowledged his debt to ancient authors, such as Pliny and Theophrastus, and made numerous references to Roman works.

In geology, Georgius Agricola described and illustrated how ore veins occur in and on the ground.

Georgius Agricola described prospecting for ore veins and surveying in detail, as well as washing the ores to collect the heavier valuable minerals, such as gold and tin.

Georgius Agricola described mining methods which are now obsolete, such as fire-setting, which involved building fires against hard rock faces.

Georgius Agricola's wife had a memorial plate commissioned and placed inside, that was already removed during the 17th century.