GEOFFROY, ETIENNE FRANCOIS (1672-1731), French chemist, born in Paris on the 13th of February 1672, was first an apothecary and then practised medicine. After studying at Montpellier he accompanied Marshal Tallard on his embassy to London in 1698 and thence travelled to Holland and Italy. Returning to Paris he became professor of chemistry at the Jardin du Roi and of pharmacy and medicine at the College de France, and dean of the faculty of medicine. He died in Paris on the 6th of January 1731. His name is best known in connexion with his tables of affinities (_tables des rapports_), which he presented to the French Academy in 1718 and 1720. 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 C.L. Berthollet. 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 medica_, published posthumously in 1741, was long celebrated. His brother CLAUDE JOSEPH, known as Geoffroy the younger (1685-1752), was also an apothecary and chemist who, having a considerable knowledge of botany, devoted himself especially to the study of the essential oils in plants. GEOFFROY, JULIEN LOUIS (1743-1814), French critic, was born at Rennes in 1743. He studied in the school of his native town and at the College Louis le Grand in Paris. He took orders and fulfilled for some time the humble functions of an usher, eventually becoming professor of rhetoric at the _College Mazarin_. A bad tragedy, Caton, was accepted at the _Theatre Francais_, but was never acted. On the death of Elie Freron in 1776 the other collaborators in the _Annee litteraire_ asked Geoffroy to succeed him, and he conducted the journal until in 1792 it ceased to appear. Geoffroy was a bitter critic of Voltaire and his followers, and made for himself many enemies. An enthusiastic royalist, he published with Freron's brother-in-law, the abbe Thomas Royou (1741-1792), a journal, _L'Ami du roi_ (1790-1792), which possibly did more harm than good to the king's cause by its ill-advised partisanship. During the Terror Geoffroy hid in the neighbourhood of Paris, only returning in 1799. An attempt to revive the _Annee litteraire_ failed, and Geoffroy undertook the dramatic feuilleton of the _Journal des debats_. His scathing criticisms had a success of notoriety, but their popularity was ephemeral, and the publication of them (5 vols., 1819-1820) as _Cours de litterature dramatique_ proved a failure. He was also the author of a perfunctory _Commentaire_ on the works of Racine prefixed to Lenormant's edition (1808). He died in Paris on the 27th of February 1814.