The history of chemistry generally seems to admit that a distinction took place between alchemy and chemistry at the turn of the 18th century and then highlights especially chemists who advanced theoretical chemistry: E.-F. Geoffroy, Rouelle or Venel. However, beside these great names, there were other chemists not all really unknown but often recognized as less important. They were inter alia Hellot, Claude-Joseph Geoffroy, Grosse, Lebrecht, Du Fay. They shared all an obvious interest in alchemical works on the metal transmutation, an interest certainly visible in their papers and manuscripts but also sometimes in their published texts. And yet, all these chemists took part, in a privileged manner, in the economic development effort of France initiated in particular by the Regent, Philippe II Duke of Orleans. The latter, very interested in alchemy, placed directly under his protection, by 1715, the Royal Academy of Science which he wanted to make an essential instrument of his projects of reform and re-establishment of the kingdom, especially through the inquiry that he launched from 1716 to 1718 in order to create a national economy instead of the local economies. So the Duke of Orleans appears as a key character of the evolution of the 18th century chemistry: he named academicians people of his entourage related to alchemy, who in their turn proposed candidates at the Academy when a place in the class of chemistry was released. The result was the constitution of a core of alchemical chemists in the Academy who all conformed to the requirement of utility and subordination to the interests of investors looking for scientific and technical competences provided by an Academy of Science more and more on the decline. The most representative character was Jean Hellot, practising alchemist and collector of alchemical texts but also academician, general inspector of the dyeing industry, chief assayer, organizer of the porcelain production, expert and advisor of several ministers on questions of crafts and trades, who was certainly selected at the commission for the mines, partly for his alchemical competences, as he was able to distinguish between charlatans and true scholars.