astronomy

Lazăr Edeleanu

Lazăr Edeleanu is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Lazăr Edeleanu rather than just read about it. In short: Lazăr Edeleanu (Romanian: [ˈlazər edeˈle̯anu]; 1 September 1861, Bucharest – 7 April 1941, Bucharest) 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.

Key takeaways

Lazăr Edeleanu belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Lazăr Edeleanu to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Lazăr Edeleanu from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Lazăr Edeleanu (Romanian: [ˈlazər edeˈle̯anu]; 1 September 1861, Bucharest – 7 April 1941, Bucharest) 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.

Research activity in England and Romania After completing lyceum at Saint Sava High School, he went to study at the University of Berlin. He obtained his doctorate in Chemistry in 1887, with thesis "About some derivatives of phenyl methacrylic acid and phenyl isobutyric acid" written under the direction of August Wilhelm von Hofmann. After that, 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 Charles Frederick Cross and Edward John Bevan to create a certain type of artificial fireproof silk. With Raphael 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 University of Bucharest's Faculty of Sciences in the 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 Disconto-Gesellschaft. 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.

Research and business in Germany In 1910, Edeleanu settled in Germany where he founded a company called "Allgemeine Gesellschaft für Chemische Industrie". Due to the success of the name "Edeleanu", the company changed its name to Edeleanu GmbH in 1930. One of the first refineries in UK was the Manchester Oil Refinery, which was built with the involvement of Edeleanu GmbH and opened in 1938 in Trafford Park. During the Nazi regime, it was bought by the Deutsche Erdöl-AG. Several ownership changes later it was acquired by Uhde GmbH in 2002, which is owned by the ThyssenKrupp trust. The name Edeleanu is still used for the refinery department until this day. Edeleanu returned to Romania, where he died in Bucharest in April 1941.

Heritage By 1960, there were 80 Edeleanu facilities worldwide. The Edeleanu Method is still used today, in its many variations, and remains the basic process for manufacturing high quality oils. Edeleanu obtained 212 patents for inventions in Romania, the United States, Germany, France, Austria, Sweden, and the Netherlands.

Prizes and honors 1910 – Member of the Society of Natural Sciences in Moscow 1925 – Honorary Member of the Institution of Petroleum Technologists in London (1925) 1932 – Theophilus Redwood Medal for lifetime scientific achievement in analytic chemistry.

References

Sources FCER - Contribuția evreilor din România la cultură și civilizație, Editura Hasefer, 2004 p. 215-216 (Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania - Contributions of Romanian Jews to culture and civilization, Hasefer Publishing House, Bucharest 2004, in Romanian 215–216) Allgemeine deutsche Biographie & Neue deutsche Biographie Bd.4, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1959 Magdalene Moureau, Gerald Brace, Dictionnaire du petrole et d'autres sources d'energie –anglais- français Ed. Technip 2008 E H J Rosenberg- The History of selective solvents, 1st World Petroleum Congress, 18–24 July 1933, London, UK Dr. L. Edeleanu – Ludovic Marzec, in the Monit. Petr. Roumanie, obituary article – 1941

Further reading S. Benari, Lazăr Edeleanu, Editura Stiințifică și enciclopedică, București, 1982 (in Romanian) O. Păduraru -Bibliografia lucrărilor și brevetelor în limba engleză de dr. L. Edeleanu (Anglo-Rumanian Bibliography of works and brevets of dr L.Edeleanu), București 1946. I. Drimuș, C. Tache – Lazăr Edeleanu, precursor al chimizării petrolului, (in Romanian) in Revista de chimie 1958 Robert Treybal- Liquid extraction – McGraw Hill Book Co, 1951 first edition Avelino Sequeira – Lubricant base oil and wax processing CRC Press 1994 Alan A. Comyns – Encyclopedic Dictionary of Named Processes in Chemical Technology- CRC Press 1999

External links biography – in Romanian

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Lazăr Edeleanu

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Lazăr Edeleanu claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Lazăr Edeleanu before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Lazăr Edeleanu ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Lazăr Edeleanu

In research: Lazăr Edeleanu appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Lazăr Edeleanu in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Lazăr Edeleanu is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1861 births, 1941 deaths, Academic staff of the University of Bucharest, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Lazăr Edeleanu outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Lazăr Edeleanu in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Lazăr Edeleanu means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Lazăr Edeleanu out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Lazăr Edeleanu in simple terms?

Why does Lazăr Edeleanu matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Lazăr Edeleanu?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Lazăr Edeleanu.