SOURCE: An introduction to Book of Minerals, by Albertus Magnus, translated by Dorothy Wyckoff, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1967, pp. xiii-xlii.

In the following excerpt, Wyckoff presents an overview of Albert's life and discusses the nature of his scientific writings, specifically of his Book of Minerals.

Life of Albert

Albert was a famous man even in his own time but, as so often with famous men of the Middle Ages, contemporary biographers omitted much that we should like to know about him. Modern scholars have had to piece together the sometimes contradictory statements in medieval chronicles and histories of the Dominican Order, local traditions, surviving documents of business transacted in many different places, and casual references to times and places in Albert's own writings. The most comprehensive reconstruction is that of H. C. Scheeben, on which this sketch is chiefly based.

Nothing is known about Albert's parentage or...