Etienne-François Geoffroy (1676-1731), a Chemist on the Frontiers

Abstract : Etienne-François Geoffroy is certainly the most representative chemist of the Paris Académie royale des sciences in the early eighteenth century. But he is also a remarkable character, who was skillfully able to avoid the conflicts which then divided in France partisans of Newtonian and Cartesian sciences. Interested in Newtonian ideas, he did not reject Cartesian mechanism. He his 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 composition of metals or the laws of chemical affinities, but he practiced a chemistry that was rooted in laboratory works and the search for substances useful for craftsmen.