Ignacy Łukasiewicz – pharmacist, pioneer of the European oil industry, inventor of the kerosene lamp, independence activist, social activist and philanthropist. It was him who was among the patrons of 2022. A book about Łukasiewicz is published on Monday.
“Discoverer and inventor, a demon for work, innovator and teacher of young people, entrepreneur and millionaire, philanthropist and social activist, patriot and politician, but above all a modest, good and devoted man. This is what Ignacy Łukasiewicz was like and this is how the modern world should learn him,” we read in the book “Ignacy Łukasiewicz. Human Prometheus” by Piotr Franaszek, Paweł Grata, Anna Kozicka-Kołaczkowska, Mariusz Ruszel and Grzegorz Zamoyski, published on November 29 by Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy (the State Publishing Institute). The authors also note that his life was a biography of “the truest positivist, whose strength lies in work and realistic pragmatics in achieving even the most romantic goals.”
“This man was not only the inventor of the kerosene lamp and pharmacist but also – or perhaps most of all – the creator of the Polish oil industry,” Barbara Olejarz, director of the Ignacy Łukasiewicz Museum of Oil and Gas Industry in Bóbrka, pointed out in an interview with PAP (Polish Press Agency).
He was born on March 23, 1822, in Zaduszniki near Mielec. He died in Chorkówka on January 7, 1882, of pneumonia. He was buried in the parish cemetery in Zręcin.