Etienne-François Geoffroy (1672-1731), a Chemist on the Frontiers

Etienne-François Geoffroy is certainly the most representative chemist of the Paris Académie Royale des Sciences in the early eighteenth century. Interested in Newtonian ideas, he did not reject Cartesian mechanism. He is the inventor of the "Table des rapports entre les substances chimiques," which remained in use throughout the eighteenth century, but he drew from the alchemical tradition. He readily theorized about the composition of metals or the laws of chemical affinities, but he practiced a chemistry that was rooted in laboratory work and the search for substances useful to craftsmen.