Étienne François Geoffroy

Étienne François Geoffroy (13 February 1672 – 6 January 1731) was a French physician and chemist, best known for his 1718 affinity tables.

After studying at Montpellier he accompanied Marshal Tallard on his embassy to London in 1698 and thence travelled to the Netherlands and Italy.

These were lists, prepared by collating observations on the actions of substances one upon another, showing the varying degrees of affinity exhibited by analogous bodies for different reagents, and they retained their vogue for the rest of the century, until displaced by the profounder conceptions introduced by CL Berthollet.

[1] Another of his papers dealt with the delusions of the philosopher's stone, but nevertheless he believed that iron could be artificially formed in the combustion of vegetable matter.

His Tractatus de materia medico, published posthumously in 1741, was long celebrated.