Abraham Gesner

Abraham Pineo Gesner was a pioneering Nova Scotia physician, geologist, and author who conducted the first comprehensive geological survey of New Brunswick between 1838 and 1843, establishing Canada's first natural history museum (the New Brunswick Museum).

In 1846, Gesner developed a method to distill a clean-burning liquid illuminating fuel from Albertite coal and bitumen, which he patented in 1854 under the trademark "Kerosene" (from the Greek keros, meaning wax). Kerosene produced a bright, smokeless light that instantly replaced expensive, scarce whale oil, founding the modern global petroleum industry and saving sperm whales from industrial hunting.