Jonas Dupont

Jonas Dupont was a Frenchman who became famous for the publishing of the book De Incendiis Corporis Humani Spontaneis. Dupont became interested in spontaneous human combustion (SHC) after coming across the Nicole Millet case. This case occurred in 1725, where Nicole Millet's husband was accused of burning her to death, but was acquitted after a surgeon named Nicholas le Cat convinced the court that her cause of death had been SHC.

Dupont was one of the first people to publish a reliable collection of evidence on SHC. His book made SHC a thing of popular interest and sparked people's imaginations around the world, including that of Charles Dickens, who used SHC in "Bleak House", one of his books, to kill off a character.