Georgius Agricola (; born Georg Bauer; 24 March 1494 – 21 November 1555) was a German Renaissance humanist scholar, mineralogist and metallurgist. Born in the small town of Glauchau, in the Electorate of Saxony of the Holy Roman Empire, he was broadly educated, but took a particular interest in the mining and refining of metals. He 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. For his groundbreaking work De Natura Fossilium published in 1546, he is generally referred to as the father of mineralogy and the founder of geology as a scientific discipline.
He is well known for his pioneering work De re metallica libri XII, that was published in 1556, one year after his death. This 12-chapter work is a comprehensive and systematic study, classification and methodical guide on all available factual and practical aspects that are of concern for mining, the mining sciences and metallurgy, investigated and researched in its natural environment by means of direct observation. Unrivalled in its complexity and accuracy, it served as the standard reference work for two centuries. Agricola stated in the preface that he will exclude "all those things which I have not myself seen, or have not read or heard of". He continued, "That which I have neither seen, nor carefully considered after reading or hearing of, I have not written about."
As a scholar of the Renaissance, he was committed to a universal approach towards learning and research. He 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. His innovative and comprehensive scholarly work, based on new and precise methods of production and control, has made his work a central part of scholarship and understanding of science during that period.
He is often, although not universally, referred to as "the Father of mineralogy" and the founder of geology as a scientific discipline. Poet Georg Fabricius has bestowed a brief honorary title on him in recognition of his legacy that his fellow Saxons cite regularly: die ausgezeichnete Zierde des Vaterlandes, (literally: the distinguished ornament of the Fatherland). He was baptized with his birth name Georg Pawer. Pawer is a vernacular form of the modern German term Bauer, which translates to farmer in English. His teacher, the Leipzig professor Petrus Mosellanus convinced him to consider the common practice of name latinisation, particularly popular among Renaissance scholars, so "Georg Pawer" became "Georgius Agricola". Coincidentally, the name Georg/Georgius derives from Greek and also means "farmer".
Agricola was born in 1494 as Georg Pawer, the second of seven children of a clothier and dyer in Glauchau. At the age of twelve he enrolled in the Latin school in Chemnitz or Zwickau. From 1514 to 1518 he studied at the Leipzig University where, under the name Georgius Pawer de Glauchaw, he first subscribed in the summer semester to theology, philosophy, philology under rector Nikolaus Apel, and to ancient languages, Greek and Latin in particular. He 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, 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 the Greek School of Zwickau (1519–22), part of the unified (Greek and Latin) School of Zwickau (Zwickauer Ratsschule) after 1520.
In 1520 he published his first book, a Latin grammar manual with practical and methodical hints for teachers. In 1522 he ended his appointment to again study at Leipzig for another year, where, as rector, he was supported by his former tutor and professor of classics, Peter Mosellanus, with whom he had always been in correspondence. He also subscribed to the studies of medicine, physics, and chemistry.
In 1523 he traveled to Italy and enrolled in the University of Bologna and probably Padua and completed his studies in medicine. It remains unclear where he acquired his diploma. In 1524 he joined the Aldine Press, a prestigious printing office in Venice that was established by Aldus Manutius, who had died in 1515. Manutius had established and maintained contacts and the friendship in a network among the many scholars, including the most celebrated, from all over Europe, whom he had encouraged to come to Venice and take care of the redaction of the numerous publications of the classics of antiquity. At the time of Agricola's visit, the business was run by Andrea Torresani and his daughter Maria. Agricola participated in the edition of a work in several volumes on Galen until 1526.
Agricola returned to Zwickau in 1527 and to Chemnitz in autumn of the same year, where he married Anna Meyner, a widow from Schneeberg. Upon his search for employment as town physician and pharmacist in the Ore Mountains, preferably a place where he could satisfy his ardent longings for the studies on mining, he settled in the suitable little town Joachimsthal in the Bohemian Erzgebirge, where in 1516 significant silver ore deposits were found. The 15,000 inhabitants made Joachimsthal a busy, booming centre of mining and smelting works with hundreds of shafts for Agricola to investigate.
His primary post proved to be not very demanding and he lent all his spare time to his studies. Beginning in 1528 he immersed himself in comparisons and tests on what had been written about mineralogy and mining and his own observations of the local materials and the methods of their treatment. He 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. He 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. For the first time, he tackled questions on the formation of ores and minerals, attempted to bring the underlying mechanisms to light, and introduced his conclusions in a systematic framework. He laid out the whole process in a scholarly dialogue and published it under the title Bermannus, sive de re metallica dialogus, (Bermannus, or a dialogue on metallurgy) in 1530. The work was highly praised by Erasmus for the attempt to put the knowledge, won by practical inquiry, into order and further investigate in reduced form. Agricola, in his capacity of physician, also suggested that minerals and their effects on and relationship to human medicine should be a future subject of investigation.
In 1531 Christian Egenolff in Frankfurt published his German book named Rechter Gebrauch d'Alchimei, mitt vil bissher verborgenen, nutzbaren unnd lustigen Künsten, nit allein den fürwitzigen Alchimismisten, sonder allen kunstbaren Werckleutten, in und ausserhalb Feurs. Auch sunst aller menglichen inn vil wege zugebrauchen (The Proper Use of Alchemy) which argued that true "alchemy" should not attempt transmutation of metals to gold or synthesizing the philosopher's stone, but rather study and develop the industrial methods of skilled craftsmen.
In the same year, Agricola received an offer of the city of Kepmnicz (Chemnitz) for the position of Stadtleybarzt (town physician), which he accepted and subsequently relocated to Chemnitz in 1533. Although little is known about his work as physician, Agricola entered his most productive years at this time and soon became lord mayor of Chemnitz. He also served as diplomat and historiographer for Duke George, who was looking to uncover possible territorial claims and commissioned Agricola with a large historical work, the Dominatores Saxonici a prima origine ad hanc aetatem (Lords of Saxony from the beginning to the present time), which took 20 years to accomplish and was only published in 1555 at Freiberg.