Werner

WERNER, Abraham Gottlob. (Born: Wehrau, Silesia, 25 August 1749; Died: Freiberg, Germany, 30 May 1817).
Werner was born into a family with a mining tradition; therefore, it was expected he should enter
the profession. In 1774, as a student at the Freiberg Bergakademie, he wrote his first book, Von den ¨außerlichen Kennzeichen der Foßilien, and based upon its merit, in 1775, Werner was appointed professor of mineralogy at that institution. He remained there the rest of his professional life. He was by accounts an electrifying teacher, who devoted himself to developing the sciences of mineralogy and geology. His students, many of whom became famous instructors in there own right, spread his theories throughout Europe and North America.
His book is one of the most influential writings in the development of the mineralogical sciences.
It is the first successful attempt at describing systematically determinative mineralogy. Werner who wrote this book, his first, as a student, at the youthful age of 24 had been around minerals and mining his entire life. He had practical experience in what was needed by the miners to identify minerals, and the reasons for identification. Werner had originally intended to publish an annotated
translation of the dissertation by J.C. Gehler, De Characterivs Fossilivm Externis (Lipsiæ, 1757). After showing the manuscript to his scientific circle, he was advised to that it was better to write a book that was wholly his own. The result was Von den ¨ausserlichen Kennzeichen der Fossilien, and based upon its merits, where he stayed the remainder of his life.
The book is written not as a mineralogical classification system as was then typical, but rather as a compendium of external characteristics of a large number of minerals. Werner intended it to be used as a practical guide for mineral identification, and proposed that this study be given the name “oryctognosy.”— a term previously applied in a wider sense, such as Bertrand’s Dictionnaire Oryctologique Universalle, (Paris, 1763). For this study, Werner precisely defined an unprecedented number of external characteristics through hand examination. Included are color, luster, form, streak, hardness, and specific weight. Werner claimed that determining all of these qualities for a given mineral specimen was enough to identify its species. In fact, these same characters are readily found in modern handbooks of determinative mineralogy because in most cases they are enough to distinguish the common species. The landmark character of Werner’s
work rests on the fact that no one before had so precisely defined the properties used to test minerals, and the effect on mineralogical science can be described as revolutionary, with many of his former students writing their own texts to spread Werner’s theories.
Werner accumulated an extensive personal mineral collection of over 10,000 specimens, which he sold for 40,000 talers to the Freiberg Bergakademie. Today, it is together with Werner’s library among the earliest of the great collections that still remains intact.