Geneviève Thiroux d'Arconville

Marie-Geneviève-Charlotte Thiroux d'Arconville
Portrait of Mademoiselle Darlus by Charles-Antoine Coypel, 1735.
Born	17 October 1720 Paris
Died	23 December 1805 (1805-12-24) (aged 85) Paris
Nationality	French
Fields	Chemistry
Known for	Chemical study of putrefaction
Influences	Pierre-Joseph Macquer, Antoine de Jussieu
Influenced	Antoine-François Fourcroy

Marie Geneviève Charlotte Thiroux d'Arconville (née Darlus, also known as la présidente Thiroux d’Arconville and Geneviève Thiroux d'Arconville) (17 October 1720 – 23 December 1805), was a French novelist, translator and chemist who is known for her study on putrefaction. She discussed her study on putrefaction in her Essay on the History of Putrefaction in 1766.

Marie-Geneviève-Charlotte Thiroux d'Arconville was born Marie-Geneviève-Charlotte Darlus to Françoise Gaudicher and Guillaume Darlus on 17 October 1720. Her father was a tax farmer or farmer-general; they collected taxes for the state and usually kept some for themselves. Thiroux d'Arconville's mother died when she was four and her education was left in the hands of multiple governesses. As a young child, she enjoyed sculpture and art however when she learned to write at age eight, writing books became a new interest. She told friends later in life that she hardly had an idea without a pen in her hand.

At fourteen years old, Thiroux d'Arconville requested to be married to Louis Lazare Thiroux d'Arconville, a tax farmer who later became a president in the Parliament of Paris, a regional justice court. She is an anomaly in that most women during this time period didn’t request to be married. The two were married on 28 February 1735. Together the couple had three sons. As a married woman, Thiroux d'Arconville enjoyed theater and opera, similar to many wealthy women. She reportedly saw Voltaire’s Mérope fifteen times in a row. However, when she was 22, Thiroux d'Arconville suffered from a case of smallpox that left her badly scarred. After this experience she withdrew from society and spent her time studying and focusing on religion.

Thiroux d'Arconville studied English and Italian at her home and attended science classes at Jardin des Plantes, the Kings’s Garden in Paris and a center of medical education that was founded in 1626 by King Louis XIII. She also often gathered well-known scientists in her home. The Garden offered courses on physics, anatomy, botany and chemistry to both men and women. It is thought that Thiroux d'Arconville took both anatomy and chemistry classes. Similar to many aristocratic women of the time,Thiroux d'Arconville also collected rare plants and stones. While she enjoyed these activities, she wanted to learn more so she set up a laboratory in her home and stocked it with chemistry equipment. She also ordered books from Bibliothèque nationale de France, the national library of France. Initially Thiroux d'Arconville worked as a botanist, she sent specimens to Jardin des Plantes. Eventually she turned to chemistry and started working under the guidance of Pierre Macquer, a professor of chemistry and pharmacology at the Garden.