Étienne François Geoffroy

Étienne François Geoffroy ( born February 13, 1672 Paris, † January 6, 1731 in Paris) was a French chemist who previously trained pharmacist and a practicing doctor was. His brother Claude -Joseph Geoffroy was also a chemist.

Life and work

The son of a pharmacist in Paris, Matthieu -François Geoffroy (1644-1708), born in the Geoffroy studied in Montpellier, where he graduated in 1693 as a pharmacist. He joined the diplomatic mission of Marshal Tallards in London in 1698. He then traveled through the Netherlands and Italy. In 1704 he received the degree of Doctor of Medicine in Paris. The title of the thesis was to Hominis primordia, vermis? (1704)

In 1709 he was appointed professor of medicine and chemistry at the Collège Royal. In the years 1726-1729 he was Dean of the Faculty of Medicine of Paris. In 1718 he discovered the principle of affinity in chemistry and developed an affinity table ( relationship panel), where he worked in the following years.

The Academy of Sciences put Geoffroy in 1722, a report, which educates about alchemical fraud. After his death in 1731, his three-volume - chemical plant was launched. Although he refuted the Philosopher's Stone, he believed, however, that can be produced from plant ash iron artificially.

About the Contact of Caspar Neumann, a student of Georg Ernst Stahl, the brothers Étienne François and Claude -Joseph Geoffroy came the ideas of phlogiston in the French science.

His affinity tables were lists, which are joined, created by collecting observations during mixing of various chemical substances. The lists show the affinity of the same chemicals to various reagents. These relationships were valid until the end of the century, until they were replaced by Berthollet Claude Louis by a more substantial concept.