Anselmus de Boodt

Anselmus de Boodt (also Anselmus Boëtius de Boodt) (Bruges, 1550 - Bruges, 21 June 1632) was a Belgian mineralogist and physician from the city of Brugge during the European Renaissance. Along with the "Father of Mineralogy", the German known by his nom de plume Georgius Agricola, Anselmus is responsible for establishing the modern geological earth science study of mineralogy. His definitive written work was the Gemmarum et Lapidum Historia.

Anselmus and his work were also mentioned briefly in Helena de Jong's Bibliography.

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Life

Anselmus came from aristocratic background, and was of Roman Catholic faith. Although he was born and died in what is now modern-day Belgium, much of his career was spent in Czechoslovakia. He studied law at the Louvian, studied medicine under Thomas Erastus at Heidelberg, and received a medical degree at Padua. Throughout his education and career (until he was about 35) he was supported financially from the wealthy base of his family.

In his later written Gemmarum et Lapidum Historia, Anselmus made a concerted systematic effort to list and describe some 600 known minerals, describing their properties and medical uses.

In 1583 he was serving a Wilhelm Rosenberg as a physician in Prague, Bohemia, yet during the 1580s he was known to have been involved in the financial administration of the city of Bruges. He was also known to have been a friend to the Bohemian naturalist, philosopher and historian Thadeus Hayek.

Bibliography

• Le Parfaict joaillier ou l'histoire des pierreries sont amplement descrites, Ans. Boece de Boot, Lyon, Huguetan, 1644

• Gemmarum et lapidum historia : quam olim edidit Anselmus Boetius de Boot ... / Postea Adrianus Tollius ... recensuit; figuris melioribus, & commentariis pluribus illustravit, & indice auxit multo locupletiore, de Boodt Anselmus Boëtius 1550-1632. -- Tollius Adrianus, 17th cent., ed. -- De Laet Joannes 1581-1649 -- Theophrastus 372-287 B.C, Lugduni Batavorum, ex officina Ioannis Maire, 1647.

See also

• Shen Kuo (medieval Chinese geologist and mineralogist)
• List of minerals
• List of mineralogists

References

• Needham, Joseph (1986). Science and Civilization in China, Volume 3. Taipei: Caves Books, Ltd.