Jean-Baptiste Quéruel (23 November 1779 – 20 June 1845) was the inventor of the method for industrial production of
sugar from
beet
The beetroot is the taproot portion of a beet plant, usually known in North America as beets while the vegetable is referred to as beetroot in British English, and also known as the table beet, garden beet, red beet, dinner beet or golden beet ...
.
Quéruel was born on 23 November 1779 in
Normandy at the hamlet of La Perrochère in
Saint-Quentin-les-Chardonnets, the son of Jacques Queruel and Marie Anne Lebarbé (or Lebarbey).
Around the beginning of the 19th century, Quéruel was hired by
Benjamin Delessert
Jules Paul Benjamin Delessert (14 February 1773 – 1 March 1847) was a French banker and naturalist. He was an honorary member of the Académie des Sciences and many species were named from his natural history collections.
Biography
He was bor ...
in his sugar factory at
Passy, where he succeeded, by the end of 1811, in developing the process that would lead to the manufacture of sugar on an industrial scale from
sugar beet
A sugar beet is a plant whose root contains a high concentration of sucrose and which is grown commercially for sugar production. In plant breeding, it is known as the Altissima cultivar group of the common beet (''Beta vulgaris''). Together w ...
, providing for the first time the impetus for the mass-production of this new sort of sugar.
Quéruel had married, on 22 April 1815 in Paris, Françoise Marie Lebaudy, the daughter of Pierre and Marie Jeanne Lebaudy Gallier, and the cousin of the prominent Lebaudy family of sugar-makers. He died on 20 June 1845 in his home of La Bichetière, in
Tinchebray
Tinchebray () is a former commune in the Orne department in the Lower Normandy region in north-western France. On 1 January 2015, Tinchebray and six other communes merged becoming one commune called Tinchebray-Bocage.
History
It was the scene ...
, and was buried with his wife in the cemetery of Les Montiers. His birthplace still exists, with a street of Tinchebray given his name.
1779 birthshttps://gaia.orne.fr/mdr/index.php/docnumViewer/calculHierarchieDocNum/372329/1057:358363:371981:372329/1080/1920
1845 deaths
People from Orne
19th-century French inventors
History of sugar
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