Joseph Marie Élisabeth Durocher

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Joseph Marie Élisabeth Durocher was a French geologist who lived from 1817 to 1860. He was born in Rennes, France, and studied at the École Polytechnique and the École des Mines in Paris, qualifying as a mining engineer. Early in his career, he traveled around northern Europe to study metal deposits and wrote about geology, mineralogy, metallurgy, and chemistry for Paul Gaimard’s scientific voyages.

In 1844, Durocher became a professor of geology and mineralogy at Rennes. His research later focused on producing minerals artificially, the metamorphism of rocks, and the origin of igneous rocks. In 1857, he published Essai de pétrologie comparée, where he argued that igneous rocks come from two coexisting magmas beneath the crust—acid and basic.