Books by Georgius Agricola

About the author

Georgius Agricola (1494–1555), born Georg Bauer in Saxony, was a scholar and physician who worked in the mining towns of Bohemia and Saxony. Instead of dismissing mining as work for the uneducated, he spent years studying the miners, their tools, machines and methods, and the minerals they dug.

His great book De Re Metallica, published in 1556, with nearly three hundred woodcuts, was the standard work on mining and metallurgy for two centuries; in 1912 it was translated into English by Herbert Hoover, the future American president, and his wife Lou. He is often called the father of mineralogy.