Étienne François Geoffroy

Étienne François Geoffroy (1672 to 1731) was a French physician and chemist, best known for his affinity tables of 1718. He first thought of becoming an apothecary but chose medicine instead, and is sometimes called Geoffroy the Elder to tell him from his brother Claude Joseph, also a chemist. Born in Paris, he studied at Montpellier and went with Marshal Tallard on an embassy to London in 1698, then travelled to the Netherlands and Italy. Back in Paris he became professor of chemistry at the Jardin du Roi, professor of pharmacy and medicine at the Collège Royal, and dean of the faculty of medicine. His tables of rapports, shown to the French Academy of Sciences in 1718 and 1720, ranked the degrees of affinity that analogous substances show for different reagents, and they kept their vogue for the rest of the century until Berthollet displaced them. He also wrote on the delusions of the philosopher's stone, and his Tractatus de materia medica came out in 1741.