Background

Werner was born on September 25, 1749 in Wehrau (now Osiecznica, Lower Silesian Voivodeship), a village in Prussian Silesia. His family had been involved in the mining industry for many years. His father, Abraham David Werner, was a foreman at a foundry in Wehrau.

Education

When he was 10 years old, Werner went to school at Bunzlau, Silesia, but five years later he returned home to become his father's assistant.

However, his interest in mineralogy became so strong that he abandoned this practical career and in 1769 entered the Mining Academy of Freiberg. After two years there he matriculated in 1771 at the University of Leipzig.

During his stay at Leipzig as a student, Werner became acutely aware of the unsatisfactory character of the numerous systems used at the time to describe and classify minerals. Two conflicting approaches, based respectively on the chemical composition and on the physical characters of minerals, had created a confused association of unrelated observations, imprecise definitions, and impractical tabular arrangements.

In the amazingly short time of a year, Werner wrote and then published Vonden äusserlichen Kennzeichen der Fossilien (1774; On the External Characters of Fossils, or of Minerals), the first modern textbook of descriptive mineralogy. Although Werner recognized that a true and final classification of minerals should be based on their chemical composition, he emphasized that it should be preceded by a method which would allow a precise identification of the various minerals by means of their external characters and physical properties. Werner's description of the external characters of minerals, which occupies the major part of his book, remains an outstanding illustration of his unusual gift of observation and his knowledge of minerals. However, the quality of his work on mineralogy decreases abruptly with the discussion of the crystalline forms, for he was a practical or applied mineralogist to whom the mathematical aspect of mineralogy was superfluous. He never realized the basic importance of crystallography, which he thought was applied mathematics rather than a branch of mineralogy.

Upon publication of his book on minerals, Werner left Leipzig and returned to his home in Wehrau, where he became involved in the preparation of field trips to collect minerals and visit mines.

Career

Werner worked with his father for five years in the ironworks at Wehrau and Lorzendorf. In 1775 he was appointed inspector and teacher in the Freiburg School of Mining. During his 40-year tenure, the school grew from a local academy into a world-renowned centre of scientific learning. Werner was a brilliant lecturer and a man of great charm, and his genius attracted students who, inspired by him, became the foremost geologists of Europe.

A distinguishing feature of Werner’s teaching was the care with which he taught the study of rocks and minerals and the orderly succession of geological formations, a subject that he called geognosy. Influenced by the works of Johann Gottlob Lehmann and Georg Christian Füchsel, Werner demonstrated that the rocks of the Earth are deposited in a definite order. Although he had never travelled, he assumed that the sequence of the rocks he observed in Saxony was the same for the rest of the world. He believed that the Earth was once completely covered by the oceans and that, with time, all the minerals were precipitated out of the water into distinct layers, a theory known as Neptunism.

Because this theory did not allow for a molten core, he proposed that volcanoes were recent phenomena caused by the spontaneous combustion of underground coal beds. He asserted that basalt and similar rocks were accumulations of the ancient ocean, whereas other geologists recognized them as igneous minerals. It was primarily disagreement on this point that formed one of the great geological controversies.

Werner wrote only 26 scientific works, most of them short contributions to journals. His aversion to writing grew, and finally he adopted the practice of storing his mail unopened. Elected a foreign member of the Académie des Sciences in 1812, he learned of the honour much later, when he happened to read about it in a journal. In spite of his failure to produce extensive geological writings, Werner’s theories were faithfully adopted and widely spread by his loyal students. Even though many of them eventually discarded his Neptunist theories, they would not publicly renounce them while Werner still lived.

Werner was plagued by frail health his entire life, and passed a quiet existence in the immediate environs of Freiberg. An avid mineral collector in his youth, he abandoned field work altogether in his later life. There is no evidence that he had ever traveled beyond Saxony in his entire adult life. Werner retired to Dresden, where he died, a bachelor, on June 30, 1817.

Achievements

• Abraham Gottlob Werner was a German geologist who set out an early theory about the stratification of the Earth's crust and propounded a history of the Earth that came to be known as Neptunism. While most tenets of Neptunism were eventually set aside, Werner is remembered for his demonstration of chronological succession in rocks; for the zeal with which he infused his pupils; and for the impulse he thereby gave to the study of geology. He has been called the "father of German geology".
  
  The variety of scapolite known as wernerite is named in his honour. Werner is credited with coining the term geognosy, for the geological study of the Earth's structure, specifically its exterior and interior construction.
  
  In 1805, he described the mineral zoisite and named it after Sigmund Zois, who sent him its specimens from Saualpe in Carinthia.
  
  Werner’s major work, Von den äußerlichen Kennzeichen der Foßilien (1774), contained a comprehensive colour scheme he had devised for the description and classification of minerals. The work, incorporating this colour nomenclature with some modifications, was translated into French by Claudine Guyton de Morveau (née Picardet) in 1790 and into English by Thomas Weaver in 1805. Patrick Syme (1774–1845), painter to the Wernerian and Horticultural Societies of Edinburgh, published in 1814 a revised version, entitled Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours, with Additions, arranged so as to render it useful to the Arts and Sciences. In Germany, the scheme was favoured, for example, by the young polymath Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg) (1772–1801), who was impressed by its analytical character.
  
  The Werner Mountains in Antarctica and the Werner Range in Greenland were named after him.

Works

More photos

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  • Werner's Nomenclature of Colours: Adapted to Zoology, Botany, Chemistry, Mineralogy, Anatomy, and the Arts

    (First published in 1814, Werner's Nomenclature of Colours...)

  • A Treatise on the External Characters of Minerals (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from A Treatise on the External Characters of Min...)

  • New Theory of the Formation of Veins: With Its Application to the Art of Working Mines. Translated from the German. To Which is Added, an Appendix, ... of the Subject; by Charles Anderson

    (This Elibron Classics edition is a facsimile reprint of a...)

  • Kurze Klassifikation Und Beschreibung Der Verschiedenen Gebirgsarten... (German Edition)

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

  • Handbuch der Mineralogie nach A. G. Werner, Zweyter Theil (German Edition)

    ( This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923....)

  • Von Den Äusserlichen Kennzeichen Der Fossilien... (German Edition)

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

  • Denkschrift Zur Erinnerung an Die Verdienste Des in Dresden Am 30. Juni 1817 Verstorbenen K. G. Bergrath's Werner Und an Die Fortschritte Bei Der Berg (German Edition)

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

  • Versuch Einer Mineralogie, Volume 1...

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

  • Elementos De Orictognosia, Ó Del Conocimiento De Los Fósiles: Dispuestos, Según Los Principios De A. G. Wérner Para El Uso Del Real Seminario Del Minería De México (Spanish Edition)

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

  • Herrn Bergrath Werner's leztes Mineral-System. (German Edition)

    ( This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923....)

Views

He had only contempt for the speculative naturalists who were concerned with theories about the origin of the earth, and therefore he called his subject "geognosy, " or "earth knowledge, " which he defined as the science concerned with the arrangement of minerals in the various layers, and with the relationship of such layers, in order to reach an understanding of the constitution of the earth. He emphatically stressed the precision of his observations but did not hesitate to make sweeping generalizations about the whole earth from his very limited experience in Saxony.

He gradually changed his hypotheses into so-called "facts" by the simple process of repeating them many times with unshakable confidence. Therefore, Werner's system, which pretended to avoid speculation, actually became the most speculative and erroneous attempt at explaining the origin of the earth. Werner subdivided the earth's crust into a series of superposed and distinct "formations. " He believed that these formations could be recognized all over the world and would therefore provide the key to the understanding of the geology of any country. He adopted the old idea that the earth originally consisted of a solid core completely surrounded by a universal ocean, which was at least as deep as the highest mountains and contained great quantities of mineral matter.

Since the sea played a fundamental role in this system, the name of Neptunism was given to Werner's school. In this universal body of water, chemical precipitation took place, generating and depositing all forms of rocks in a constant succession.

Because Werner did not believe that the earth had any kind of internal fire or other deep-seated source of energy, he was forced to consider volcanic rocks as recent and accidental products, which he explained by means of the old concept of the combustion of underground coal beds.

A further strange characteristic of Werner's was his denial of the disturbances of the earth's crust, such as folding or tilting, as proofs of the internal energy of the earth. Beds were supposed to have been deposited essentially in a horizontal position, and those dipping more than 30° were considered as having been "locally disturbed" by processes which were not elaborated upon. This refutation of mountain-building processes as an expression of internal energy was naturally coupled with Werner's equally dogmatic refutation of the occurrence of past volcanic activity.

Origin of Ore Deposits Werner's ideas on the origin of ore deposits were corollaries of his general theory on geognosy.

He stated that mineral veins were due to the filling by precipitates of fissures developed on the bottom of the universal ocean. The fissures were formed either by contraction or by the effects of earthquake movements. Consistent with his negation of the earth's internal fire, he refuted the idea that veins could have been filled by the products deposited by solutions or vapors originating from within the earth. Despite his ever present dogmatism, Werner did, however, demonstrate the value of a geometrical classification of veins, and he also gave excellent descriptions of their internal structures.

Membership

He was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1810.

He also was a Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Connections

He never married.

References

• Geschichte der Geologie in Deutschland (German Edition)
• Kurze Geschichte der Geologie und Paläontologie: Ein Lesebuch (German Edition)