WERNER, ABRAHAM GOTTLOB father of German geology, was born in Upper Lusatia, Saxony, on Sept. 25, 1750. He was educated at Bunzlau, Silesia, and in 1764 joined his father at Count Solm's iron-works at Wehrau and Lorzendorf, with the idea of ultimately succeeding him as inspector. In 1769, however, he entered the mining school at Freiburg, and in 1771 went to Leipzig, where he studied law and mineralogy. In 1775 he was appointed inspector and teacher in the mining school at Freiberg. He devoted himself for 4o years to the development of the school, which rose to be one of the centres of scientific intelligence in Europe. He died at Freiburg on June 3o, 1817. One of the distinguishing features of Werner's teaching was the care with which he taught lithology and the succession of geological formation; a subject to which he applied the name geognosy. His views on a definite geological succession were inspired by the works of J. G. Lehmann and G. C. Fuchsel (1722— 73). He showed that the rocks o; the earth follow each other in a certain definite order. He had never travelled, and the sequence of rock-masses which he had recognized in Saxony was believed by him to be of universal application. (See his Kurze Klassifika tion and Beschreibung der verschiedenen Gebirgsarten, 1787.)
He taught that the rocks were precipitates of a primaeval ocean, and followed each other in successive deposits of world-wide ex tent. Volcanoes were regarded by him as abnormal phenomena, probably due to the combustion of subterranean beds of coal. Basalt and similar rocks, already recognized by other observers as of igneous origin, he believed to be water-formed accumula tions of the some ancient ocean. Hence arose one of the great historical controversies of geology. Werner's followers preached the doctrine of the aqueous origin of rocks, and were known as Neptunists; their opponents, who recognized the important part taken in the construction of the earth's crust by subterranean heat, were styled Vulcanists. R. Jameson, the most distinguished of his British pupils, was for many years an ardent teacher of the Wernerian doctrines. Though much of Werner's theoretical work was erroneous, science is indebted to him for so clearly demonstrating the chronological succession of rocks.
See S. G. Frisch, Lebensbeschreibung A. G. Werners (Leipzig, 1825) ; Lyell, Principles of Geology (i830) ; and Sir A. Geikie, Founders of Geology (1897; 2nd ed., 5906).