Lazăr Edeleanu

Lazăr Edeleanu (Romanian pronunciation: [ˈlazər edeˈle̯anu]; 1 September 1861, Bucharest – 7 April 1941) was a Romanian chemist of Jewish origin. He is known for being the first chemist to synthesize amphetamine at the University of Berlin and for inventing the modern method of refining crude oil.

After receiving his doctorate, Edeleanu worked for some time at the Royal College of Artillery in London as a lecturer and as an assistant to Professor Hodgkinson. During this period, he collaborated with C.F. Cross and E.J. Bevan to create a certain type of artificial fireproof silk. With R. Meldola he created oxazine-based dyes. Back in Romania, he was hired by the chemist Constantin I. Istrati as an assistant and then as a lecturer at the Faculty of Sciences in Bucharest's Organic Chemistry Department. In 1906 he was appointed Head of the Chemistry Laboratory at the Geology Institute, founded that year, and director of Vega Refinery near Ploiești, a refinery owned at that time by the German company Diskont). In 1907, along with Ion Tănăsescu, he co-organized the Petroleum Congress in Bucharest and co-authored a monograph on the physical and technical properties of Romanian crude oil.

His most significant invention, was the Edeleanu process (1908). It is a process in which petroleum is refined with liquid sulfur dioxide to selectively extract aromatic hydrocarbons (benzene, toluene, xylene, etc.). The procedure was first applied experimentally in Romania at the Vega Refinery and later spread to France (notably Rouen), Germany, and subsequently throughout the world.

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