16 | Great Geologists
Abraham
Werner
Abraham Werner – an 1801 portrait by
Christian Leberecht Vogel.
It would be easy to dismiss Abraham Werner from the
inventory of Great Geologists because of his promotion of
a controversial and severely flawed theory that became
known as “Neptunism.” The theory held that almost all
rocks were the result of deposition or precipitation of
sediments accumulating on the floor of an ancient ocean.
Even during its late 18th century heyday, this notion was
rejected by those who recognised the importance of
igneous processes (volcanoes and magmatic intrusions). In
his Principals of Geology, Sir Charles Lyell was particularly
critical of Werner, although with some distortion of
Werner’s work. Nonetheless, any dismissal of Werner as a
Great Geologist would ignore both his tireless promotion of
geology as one of the most respected teachers in Europe
and his development of the rudiments of mineralogy
and stratigraphy. In short, 18th century geology as a
science moved forward in no small part because of the
observations and teachings of Werner.
Abraham Gottlob Werner was born in 1750, in the
town of Wehrau, then located in Saxony (the town is
now called Osiecznica and is within Poland). The local
region has a long history of coal and metal ore mining.
With family connections in these industries, he was
sent to study law and mining at Freiberg Academy and
Leipzig University. An apt scholar, on completion of
his education in 1775, Werner became Inspector and
Teacher of Mining and Mineralogy at the small, but
influential, Freiberg Mining Academy. This would be his
intellectual base for the next forty years.
Even before Werner’s first professional appointment,
he had published an important and influential textbook
in 1774: Von den äusserlichen Kennzeichen der
Fossilien (On the External Characters of Fossils).
Despite the title, the book was a systematic description
of minerals, with a particular focus on their colours.
Despite this promising start as an author, Werner
produced few other publications. Instead, he preferred
to concentrate on oral teaching and it was his students
who published or otherwise promoted many of his
ideas. Not only did Werner develop an aversion to
writing, in later life, he adopted the practice of storing
his mail unopened. Elected a foreign member of
the French Académie des Sciences in 1812, he only
learned of the honour much later, when he happened
to read about it in a journal.
By all accounts, Werner was a brilliant teacher. He
rapidly attracted bright minds from across Europe
to attend his classes in Freiburg, including Robert
Jameson, who later became Regius Professor of