Norbert Rillieux

(March 17, 1806-October 8, 1894)

chemical engineer, revolutionized the sugar industry by building a refining system;

He was a biracial African-American inventor and engineer who invented a device that revolutionized sugar processing. Rillieux’s multiple effect vacuum sugar evaporator (patented in 1864) made the processing of sugar more efficient, faster, and much safer. The resulting sugar was also superior. His apparatus was eventually adopted by sugar processing plants all around the world.His inventions protected lives by ending the older, dangerous methods of sugar production.

Courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration

Even with the oppressions of Blacks during this era, the circumstances never prevented the minds of the visionaries to create their inventions for generations in that era, the present and the future that is written in history eternally.