Jean du Chatelot, Baron de Beausoleil

German mineralogist and alchemist who lived during the first half of the seventeenth century. He traveled over most European countries looking for metals with the aid of a divining ring. In 1626 his instruments were seized under the pretext that they were bewitched, and he was imprisoned in the Bastille, where he died in 1643. In 1617 he published a work entitled Diorisinus, id est defintis verae philisophice de materia prima lapidis philosophalis. Beausoleil was the greatest of French metallurgists of his time.