ROME DE  L'ISLE, JEAN BAPTISTE LOUIS (1736-1790), French mineralogist, was born on the 26th of August 1736 at Gray, in Haute-Saone . As secretary of a company of artillery he visited the East Indies, and was taken prisoner by the English in '761 and held in captivity for three years . Subsequently he became distinguished for his researches on mineralogy and crystallography . He was the author of Essai de Cristallographie (1772), the second edition of which, regarded as his principal work, was published as Cristallographie (3 vols. and atlas, 1783) . He died at Paris on the 7th of March 1790 .