Jean-Étienne Guettard

Jean-Étienne Guettard (22 September 1715 – 7 January 1786), French naturalist and mineralogist, was born at Étampes, near Paris.

In boyhood, he gained a knowledge of plants from his grandfather, who was an apothecary, and later he qualified as a doctor in medicine. Pursuing the study of botany in various parts of France and other countries, he began to take notice of the relation between the distribution of plants and the soils and subsoils. In this way his attention came to be directed to minerals and rocks.