Norbert Norman Rillieux ----- Inventor of the Evaporating Pan for Sugar Refinery

 

Norbert Rillieux 

Norbert Rillieux was a brilliant student of thermodynamics who became famous for devising evaporators for sugar cane, revolutionizing the sugar-refining industry and easing the labor of slaves. 

Born free on March 17, 1806, on a New Orleans plantation to Vincent Rillieux, a prosperous engineer and inventor of a steam-operated cotton baler, and his slave wife, Constance Vivant, Norbert Rillieux was baptized at the St. Louis Cathedral in the Latin Quarter. 

Norbert was the oldest of seven children.  As a Creole, Norbert had access to education and privileges not available to lower-status blacks or slaves. He was educated at Catholic Schools, then at L'Ecole Centrale in Paris.

In 1830 he published his findings on the applicability of steam economy to industry, and began working on the problem of evaporating moisture from cane juice while lowering heat to produce a whiter, more refined, sugar crystal.