Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès (; 24 October 1817 – 31 May 1880) was a French chemist and inventor who is famous for his invention of margarine. Early life Hippolyte Mège was born on 24 October 1817 in Draguignan to Jean Joseph-Emmanuel Mège and his wife, Marie Marguerite Mouriès. The son of a primary school teacher, he added his mother's surname to his own around 1850 to distinguish himself from others of the same last name. Legal documents, however, often used "Mège". In 1838, Mège obtained a job as a pharmacist in the central pharmacy of the Hôtel-Dieu hospital in Paris. Early work Mège started to publish original contributions in applied chemistry, such as a form of the syphilis medicine Copahin refined with nitric acid that eliminated side-effects. He also obtained patents for effervescent tablets, for techniques in paper making and sugar refining, and for the tanning of leather using egg yolks. By 1852, Mège-Mouriès was studying the chemistry of foods. He added calcium phosphate and protein to chocolate in an attempt to make it healthier. Bread By 1855, Mège-Mouriès was studying bread. In addition to examining the coloration of bread, he developed a way of making bread that allowed bakers to produce 14% more bread given a fixed amount of ingredients. This was a major achievement, arousing international interest in France, Germany, and Britain. His work was a topic of great interest at the Royal Society of Arts in London. Eliza Acton discussed his new discoveries in detail in The English Bread-Book For Domestic Use (1857). Mège-Mouriès received two gold medals for his work. In 1861, Napoleon III awarded him the Légion d’Honneur for his work on bread-making. Margarine In the 1860s Mège-Mouriès focused on fat processing. France was experiencing a butter shortage, and Napoleon III offered a prize for producing a butter substitute. Mège-Mouriès experimented with what was believed to be a new fatty acid discovered by Michel Eugene Chevreul, acide margarique or margaric acid. By 1867, Mège-Mouriès was working at la Ferme Impériale de la Faisanderie, Napoleon III's private farm in Vincennes near Paris. Mège-Mouriès's invention, originally known as oleomargarine, was created by mixing processed beef tallow with skimmed milk. It produced whitish-looking beads or pearls. A British patent application describes the process as follows: Although he did not correctly understand the chemistry involved, the Mège-Mouriès process was a significant achievement in that he successfully rendered a bland, neutral fat