Théodore Tiffereau

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Théodore Cyprien Tiffereau (June 23, 1819 – March 9, 1909) was a French photographer and alchemist. He studied chemistry and physics at the Professional School No. 2 of Nantes, where he later taught chemistry. He traveled to Mexico from 1842 to 1847 and brought back daguerreotypes of landscapes and native Mexicans. Between 1854 and 1855, he submitted six memoirs to the French Academy of Sciences about turning silver into gold, claiming that Mexican silver had special properties that could enable transmutation. The Academy treated his ideas as serious enough to form a committee to investigate them.