Mining Academies as Centers of Geological Research and Education in Europe Between 18th and 19th Centuries

The aim of the 18th century mining academies was to create a completely new type of higher education at the same level of the classical universities. Most of the historians agree in stating that toward the end of the 18th century the development of new techniques, together with the increasing demand for metals and the problems of exploitation, required the formation of a new trained class of mining officers and experts. In the cases of Freiberg and Schemnitz the foundation of the mining academies was mainly the regulation and reinforcement of a local mining tradition which had already been in existence for a long time, but for example in the case of Paris, the establishment of the École des Mines was an attempt to create a completely new category of French mining experts independent from external influences. Moreover, in the German speaking world, the mining academies compensated for the lack of teaching of mineralogy and mining within the universities. Through the teaching programs of the new Academies, the students were not simply instructed in the techniques and in the disciplines traditionally connected to mining, like metallurgy, but were also introduced to the scientific study of mineralogy and geology. Some of the professors were distinguished scientists, who played a significant role in the development of mineralogy and in the birth of geology as a science, particularly during the last decades of the 18th century. To date the mining academies have been studied only individually within local contexts and a historical general syntesis concerning their role in geological research and education does not yet exist especially for the late 18th and the early 19th centuries, which was the crucial time of their formation. The importance of the mining academies for the scientific development of the Earth sciences is certainly accepted by historiography, but it definitively needs more support from new researches in depth on primary sources. The aim of this paper is to offer an overview of this historiographical question within the European context.