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Eugene Houdry was born April 18, 1892 in Domont, France. The son of a wealthy structural steel manufacturer, Houdry studied mechanical engineering at the Ecole Des Arts et Metiers in Paris. In 1911, he earned the French government's gold medal for the highest scholastic achievement in his class. Houdry worked first as an engineer and then as a junior partner in his father's business. He left the firm to serve in the French Army as a lieutenant in the tank corps. In 1917, he was seriously wounded in the Battle of Juvincourt, won the Croix de Guerre for his actions, and became a chevalier of the Legion of Honor.
After the war, the French government sought to develop an indigenous supply of automotive fuel and asked a number of engineers, including Houdry, to synthesize fuel from the abundant oil shale and bituminous coal found in France. By 1925, Houdry had developed a catalytic process that produced gasoline from lignite. This innovation, however, proved too expensive for commercial use.
Undaunted, Houdry expanded this work to discover a method for catalytically cracking low grade crude oil into high-test gasoline. This process revolutionized the production of gasoline and enabled refining companies to produce twice as much high-quality fuel per barrel of oil than the previous distillation method.
In 1930, Houdry moved to the United States, where Vacuum Oil and the Sun Oil Company provided significant financial backing for his work and his own Houdry Process Corporation. When World War II broke out in 1939, he returned briefly to his native country to help the French government adapt his catalytic cracking process to the production of high-octane aviation gasoline. By 1942, 90% of the aviation fuel produced in France, Great Britain, and the United States was catalytically cracked. Houdry also contributed to the Allied war effort by developing a single-step butane dehydrogenation process, a catalytic method for producing synthetic rubber.
After the war, Houdry formed a new company called Oxy-Catalyst and turned his attention to reducing the health risks created by the increasing amount of automobile and industrial exhausts. His catalytic muffler, which was granted a patent in 1962, greatly reduced the amount of carbon dioxide and unburned hydrocarbons. Today the device is standard on all American cars.
During his lifetime, Houdry received the Potts Medal of the Franklin Institute and the Engineering Chemistry Award of the American Chemical Society. All told, the man whom many called "Mr. Catalysis" had more than 100 patents to his name.
Houdry died on July 18, 1962.
The above information was supplied by the National Inventors Hall of Fame Foundation, Inc., Room 1D01-Crystal Plaza 3, 2021 Jefferson Davis Highway, Arlington, Virginia 22202. Videotapes and printed materials are currently available. For more information, visit the Foundation's web site at http://www.invent.org
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