Georg Bauer, the German physician and mineralogist better known as Agricola, describes the fluorine-containing mineral fluorspar (fluorite) in 1529, noting its use as flux in metallurgy.

Agricola also latinizes wismut to bisemutum, identifying the distinctive qualities of bismuth and describing how to obtain the element from its ores.

Georgius Agricola (Latinized form of Georg Bauer), who studied medicine at Leipzig University, has become a devoted follower of Erasmus, who writes a foreword to Agricola's first book on mining and metallurgy, published in 1530.

In this year, Prince Maurice of Saxony appoints him historiographer with an annual allowance, and he migrates to …

…Chemnitz, the center of the mining industry, to widen the range of his observations.

A procedure for isolating antimony is contained the book De la pirotechnia of 1540 by the late Sienese metallurgist Vannoccio Biringuccio; it is the first European description of the procedure.

This book predates the more famous 1556 book by Agricola, De re metallica, even though Agricola has been often incorrectly credited with the discovery of metallic antimony.

Georgius Agricola (Georg Bauer), while town physician of Joachimsthal (now Jachymov, Czech Republic), becomes intensely interested in all aspects of the mining and metallurgy industry by which the town thrives, and begins an extensive study of the subject.

The author of a number of works on medicine, geology, mineralogy, politics, and economics, Agricola publishes De natura fossilium (“On the Nature of Fossils”), a treatise on the origin of mountains, minerals, and underground water, in 1546.

Georgius Agricola, the German mineralogist and educator who serves as town physician of Joachimsthal, dies at sixty-one on November 21, 1555, having completed his twenty-five-year study of all aspects of the mining and metallurgy industry by which his town thrives.

His De re metallica, a twelve-chapter treatise on mining and metallurgy, including two hundred and ninety-two woodcut illustrations carefully executed by Blasius Weffringis, will see posthumous publication in early 1556.

Agricola has also authored several works on medicine, geology, mineralogy, politics, and economics.

De re metallica mentions the use of a forked hazelwood stick—the virgula divina, or "divining rod"—to find silver ore in medieval German mines.

Agricola's treatise serves as an engineering tool, demonstrating that basic mining operations—draining and ventilating the mines, carrying the ore to the surface, and crushing and washing it preparatory to working it—are all undergoing mechanization.