Antoine François Fourcroy
| Antoine François, comte de Fourcroy | |
|---|---|
French chemist
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| Born |
15 June 1755 Paris |
| Died | 16 December 1809 (aged 54) Paris |
| Citizenship | French |
| Nationality | French |
| Fields | chemistry |
| Doctoral advisor | Jean Baptiste Michel Bucquet |
| Doctoral students | Louis Nicolas Vauquelin |
| Known for | Co-discovered Iridium Co-founded modern chemical nomenclature |
Antoine François, comte de Fourcroy (15 June 1755 – 16 December 1809) was a French chemist and a contemporary of Antoine Lavoisier. Fourcroy collaborated with Lavoisier, Guyton de Morveau, and Claude Berthollet on the Méthode de nomenclature chimique, a work that helped standardize chemical nomenclature.
Fourcroy was born in Paris, the son of an apothecary in the household of the Duke of Orléans. On the advice of the anatomist Félix Vicq-d'Azyr (1748–1794) he took up medical studies, and after many difficulties caused by lack of means he finally obtained his doctor's diploma in 1780. He taught chemistry from (1783-1787) at the Veterinary School of Alfort. Fourcroy's attention was turned specifically to chemistry by J. B. M. Bucquet (1746–1780), the professor of chemistry at the Medical School of Paris. In 1784 Fourcroy was chosen to succeed P. J. Macquer (1718–1784) as lecturer in chemistry at the college of the Jardin du Roi, where his lectures attained great popularity.
Fourcroy was one of the earliest converts to the views of Lavoisier, which he helped to make widely known by his own voluminous writings. The Royal Society's Catalogue of Scientific Papers enumerates fifty-nine memoirs by Fourcroy alone, and fifty-eight written with others, mostly Louis Nicolas Vauquelin. Fourcroy's 1785 publication, Entomologia Parisiensis, sive, Catalogus insectorum quae in agro Parisiensi reperiuntur ..., co-written with Étienne Louis Geoffroy, was a major contribution to systematic entomology.
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