The discovery of the properties possessed by fragments of a ferrous mineral (magnetite) to attract small pieces of iron to two areas of their surface (called poles) appears to have taken place long before Taletes from Mileto (600 BC) discovered the property of amber to attract sufficiently small bodies when rubbed with wool or silk.
However, the first scientific study of phenomena connected with this property (magnetism) was published only in 1600 in De Magnete by William Gilbert (1544-1603), a physician at the court of British Queen Elizabeth I.

The name of magnetite given to that mineral, that of magnet, referring to its fragments, and that of magnetism referring to phenomena connected to it, comes from the name of a town in Asia Minor (Magnesia) near which this mineral was found. Since these magnets (called natural) were usually weak, their force of attraction was enhanced by an armature of soft iron which, when suitably arranged, brought the maximum load they could carry up to two hundred times more than they could carry prior to application of the armature....continues