Georgius Agricola, 1494 - 1555
November 21, 2000
Today marks the anniversary of the death of Georgius Agricola, 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. De Re Metallica is Agricola's best known work. It is a systematic examination of mining and metallurgy as practiced in the sixteenth-century mining center of Joachimsthal in Czechoslovakia. Agricola described all mining operations in great detail including prospecting, administration, the use of water power and the transport of ores.