Hydrocarbon Processing - June 2022 - 66

Industry Pioneers
to Lafayette, Indiana. In 1936, he received a BS degree in mathematics,
chemistry and physics from Purdue University.5
He
later earned an MS degree and in 1942, he received his Ph.D. in
physical chemistry from Purdue University.5
In 1941, Plank joined the research department of SoconyVacuum
Oil Company, the predecessor of Mobil Oil Corporation.
He was promoted as a senior scientist in 1970,4
the highest
scientific post, at Mobil's Research and Development Laboratory.
Throughout his career as a scientist and technologist, he was
awarded 83 U.S. patents and several hundred in other countries.5
Edward Rosinski was born in Gloucester County, New Jersey
and aspired to be a chemical engineer while still in high school.
Upon graduating in 1939, he joined the Vacuum Oil Company
as a petroleum engineer. After working with a couple of instrument
companies in the interim, he returned to Socony-Vacuum
as a lab technician in 1947, resumed his education, and in 1956
received a BS degree in chemical engineering at Drexel.6
In 1972, he was promoted to senior research associate, the
company's second-highest scientific post. Rosinski was awarded
76 U.S. patents, of which many were in the field of zeolite catalytic
technology.6
Rosinski and Plank's paper published in the journal Industrial
and Engineering Chemistry was voted as one of the 12 most
important papers published in the journal.4
In 1979, Plank and
Rosinski were inducted as the 30th and 31st members of the
National Inventors Hall of Fame for US Patent No. 3,140,249,
" Catalytic Cracking of Hydrocarbons with a Crystalline Zeolite
Catalyst Composite. " 4
ALBERT AMATUZIO
Albert Amatuzio was a passionate flyer
and a visionary who invented the first
synthetic motor oil under his company's
name Amsoil Inc. while still serving as a
squadron commander of the Air National
Guard. His invention brought synthetic
lubrication to the automotive market and
changed both the automotive and lubrication
industries forever.
Amatuzio's entrepreneurial bent surfaced at a young age as he
devised several small ventures to support his family during the
Great Depression, but his passion for flying led him to join the
Naval Corps and then the Merchant Marine. In the post-war period,
Amatuzio joined the Air Force, earned his wings and after
a hiatus due to family reasons, joined the Duluth unit of the Air
National Guard. He served as a fighter pilot for 25 yr and then
as a squadron commander. He was honored as the country's top
pilot, winning the prestigious William Tell Air-to-Air Shootout
competition and the Earl T. Rick Competitive Shootout.7
As a pilot, he gained knowledge about how jet engines survived
on synthetic oil and envisioned that the same could be
applied to other vehicles and equipment that people used in
their daily lives. He believed that the same performance benefits
would prove invaluable to cars, trucks and other combustion engines.
Oil quality during those times was poor-with problems
of low heat resistance, contribution to hard-start during cold
weather and adverse effects on engine life and performance.
He reasoned from his experience that only synthetic oils could
66 JUNE 2022 | HydrocarbonProcessing.com
avoid these adverse effects and improve engine performance.
Amatuzio's ideas seemed radical and unnecessary at that
moment. " They all thought I was at altitude too long without
oxygen, " Amtuzio joked about his skeptics.7
unmatched resilience and tenacity, he dismissed the doubters
and began his research and development efforts in 1963.7
1966, he formulated the first synthetic motor oil and founded
his company Amsoil.8
In 1972, Amsoil's tagline 'The First in
Synthetics®' was launched as AMSOIL 10W-40 Synthetic Motor
Oil became the world's synthetic motor oil to meet American
Petroleum Institute's requirements.8
Amatuzio had changed the course of the entire automotive
lubricant industry. His relentless efforts to bring the best choice
to consumers led him to make AMSOIL a technological leader
and create the AMSOIL dealer network. His product had met a
lot of criticism for being unnecessary, disruptive and " fake, " but
the founding of the dealer network in 1973 conveyed the benefits
of synthetic lubes to consumers.
In 1994, he was honored as the pioneer of synthetic lubrication
and inducted into the Lubricant's Hall of Fame.9
He received
the Natchman Award from the Independent Lubricant Manufacturers
Association. A community man and a great philanthropist,
Amatuzio is remembered through the Albert J. Amatuzio Research
Center. The center located in Duluth Depot outlines local
service history and includes photographs, journals, stories and
biographies of veterans from northeastern Minnesota who served
this nation from the Civil War through Iraq and Afghanistan.9
STEPHANIE L. KWOLEK
Stephanie Louise Kwolek, an inductee to
the National Inventors Hall of Fame and
National Women's Hall of Fame, created
the first family of synthetic fibers of exceptional
strength and stiffness. Kwolek spearheaded
the discovery, processing and development
of high-performance aramid
fibers. Kevlar, the best-known member of
this class of fibers, is widely used in more
than 200 applications, including protective bullet-proof vests,
boats, airplanes, mooring ropes and fiber-optic cables and canoes.
Kwolek was born in New Kensington, Pennsylvania and was
encouraged by her naturalist father to develop an early love for
nature, math and science. She pursued a BS degree in chemistry
from the Carnegie Institute of Technology and wanted to
make a career in medicine.10
She joined DuPont as a researcher
at the textile fibers laboratory aspiring to save money for medical
school. However, her research focusing on creating stronger and
stiffer fibers was extremely challenging and interesting and led to
her decision to make chemistry a lifetime career.
Kwolek was working on developing high-performance fibers
for extreme applications when she discovered that under certain
conditions a large number of molecules of rod-like polyamides
line up to form liquid crystalline solutions, which can be spun
directly into oriented fibers of very high strength and stiffness.
With this breakthrough came the development of Kevlar in
1965, the most acclaimed product of her research-a polymer
fiber five times stronger than the same weight of steel and her
discovery of a new branch of polymer science-liquid crystalline
However, with his
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