Who was Georgius Agricola 🤔🪨

 

Often described as one of the founding figures of mineralogy, Georgius Agricola was a 16th-century physician, scholar and author whose work transformed the way mining, minerals and metallurgy were documented. In this episode of Definitions in Detail, Luke J Timberlake explores Agricola’s life, his remarkable observations of the mining industry, and the importance of De Re Metallica — a work whose detailed illustrations and descriptions helped preserve an extraordinary picture of Renaissance mining and metallurgical technology. A look at the man whose writing helped move the study of minerals away from folklore and towards systematic observation.