Ignacy Lukasiewicz or Hovhannes Ghukasyan is known as the inventor of a kerosene lamp. From his childhood, Lukasiewicz was deeply interested in chemistry and medicine.
He started working as a pharmacist’s assistant at the age of 16 while also attending Armenian community meetings and carrying out an active political life. Lukasiewicz started working at a pharmacy in Lviv, Ukraine.
With the sponsorship of the pharmacy’s manager, Lukasiewicz entered Jagiellonian University in Krakow, and then got a master’s degree at the University of Vienna. Upon graduation, he returned to Lviv to continue working at the same pharmacy and started oil distillation experiments.
In 1853 as a result of fractional distillation, Lukasiewicz got kerosene, which unfortunately was not usable in pharmaceutics.
During his experiments, Lukasiewicz noticed that kerosene was emitting more light and less harmful substances than oil. He designed a model of a lamp working with kerosene, which he patented in 1854 in Germany.
The kerosene lamp invented by Lukasiewiez illuminated all of Europe and America until the beginning of electric power.
After a while, Lukasiewicz created the world’s first oil well on the example of a coal mine. Soon after, he built a huge manufacturing of kerosene. In 1877, the first-ever World oil congress took place in Lviv with the sponsorship of Lukasiewicz. He is known in history as the “oil genius”.
