Norbert Rillieux, and his Impact on Science

Contribution to Science

Education

While at École Centrale, he became an expert on steam engines, a knowledge that would lend itself to his greatest invention, multiple-effect evaporator, a machine used to purify cane sugar. Before his invention, sugar purification was difficult, expensive, and wasteful.

He worked on his machine between 1834 and 1843, when he then patented it. It revolutionized sugar refining, making sugar a much more accessible good.

As the son of a plantation owner, he had rights unavailable to a typical slave or free black.Baptised Roman Catholic, he studied at Catholic Schools in Louisiana before going to Paris in the early 1820s to study at an engineering school, École Centrale, where he studied Physics, Mechanics, and Engineering.

Today, his evaporators are still used for sugar,

as well as everything from desalting seawater

to recycling processes on the International Space Station.

At the age of 24, in 1830, Rillieux became the youngest ever teacher at École Centrale. He taught applied mechanics. He was also a competent blacksmith, an expert machinist, and fluent in French.

He was born on March 17, 1806

Citations

• http://blackinventor.com/norbert-rillieux/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norbert_Rillieux
• http://www.madehow.com/inventorbios/0/Norbert-Rillieux.html
• http://www.blackhistorypages.net/pages/nrillieux.php

To a prominent Creole family in New Orleans, Louisiana. His father was a white plantation owner, Vincent Rillieux, and his mother was Vincent's freed slave, Constance Vivant. He was the eldest of seven children. His aunt on his father's side was the grandmother to painter

Edgar Degas.

Late Life

After patenting his evaporator in France he returned home to Louisiana, where sugar growing was large. He faced much prejudice though, as racial tensions heated up before the Civil War. He would travel to Plantations to install his devices, but not be allowed to stay in the plantation house, or stay with the slaves due to his status, usually being given temporary housing of his own, with slave servants.

During the 1850s New Orleans was suffering from an outbreak of Yellow Fever, a deadly disease spread by mosquitoes. Rillieux devised a new sewage system for the city to try and stop the disease, but it was prevented by white state legislators. Frustrated by the racism of the pre-Civil War south, Rillieux moved back to France. Years later the city implemented nearly exactly the same plan suggested by white engineers.

In France he worked on more new inventions, but was held

back by technological conservatism of Europe. He

became highly interested in ancient Egypt before

his death, which occurred on October

8, 1894. His wife lived comfortably

for twenty more years.

Norbert Rillieux, and his Impact on Science