Étienne Geoffroy was a French entomologist and pharmacist. Throughout his life he successfully combined these two activities.
Background
Étienne Geoffroy was born on October 2, 1725, in Paris, France. He was the son of Étienne François Geoffroy, dean of the Faculty of Medicine of Paris and professor of medicine at the Collège de France, and the grandson of the apothecary Matthieu François Geoffroy. His father died when the boy was five, and Étienne was brought up by his mother.
Education
Geoffroy attended the courses of Antonie Ferrein, G. F. Rouelle, Bernard de Jussieu, and Jean Astru. He received his Doctor of Medicine at the Collège of Beauvais in 1748.
After graduating Geoffroy applied himself to medical practice while pursuing research in zoology. In 1762 he published a work on the insects of the Paris area in which he used new criteria of classification: absence or presence, number, form, and texture of the wings; and distribution of the various orders according to the number of tarsomeres in the tarsi. The latter criterion attracted the attention of Linnaeus, who often quoted Geoffroy. In 1767 Geoffroy published a volume on the terrestrial and aquatic gastropods of the Paris area in which he used the characteristics of the animal and not, as was customary, those of the shell. His study on the auditory organ in the reptiles and the fishes is an important work in comparative anatomy.
Geoffroy declined Astruc’s proposal that he succeeded the latter in the chair of medicine at the Collége de France.
Geoffroy was also the author of a Latin poem on hygiene and of a Manuel de médecine pratique, which he wrote on his farm in the village of Chartreuve, near Soissons, where he had retired. He was also the mayor of this small town.
Geoffroy was elected an associate member of the Academy of Sciences in 1798.
Academy of Sciences
,
France
1798 - 1810
Personality
Geoffroy was a modest and unselfish scientist who did not seek honors.
Connections
Geoffroy had several sons, of whom the best-known was RenéClaude Geoffroy, a physician and naturalist who traveled to Senegal and to Santo Domingo and became a member of the Academy of Medicine.