About Leo Baekeland
Leo Hendrik Baekeland was a Belgian chemist. Educated in Belgium and Germany, he spent most of his career in the United States. He is best known for the inventions of Velox photographic paper in 1893, and Bakelite in 1907. He has been called "The Father of the Plastics Industry" for his invention of Bakelite, an inexpensive, non-flammable and versatile plastic, which marked the beginning of the modern plastics industry. Baekeland had already invented a process to develop photographic plates using water instead of other chemicals, which he had patented in Belgium in 1887. He graduated with honours from the Ghent Municipal Technical School and was awarded a scholarship by the City of Ghent to study chemistry at the Ghent University, which he entered in 1880.
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