Rzeszów University of Technology (PR) has started efforts to establish 2022 as the Year of Ignacy Łukasiewicz by the Polish Parliament. It is related to the approaching 200th birth anniversary and the 140th anniversary of the death of this outstanding Pole, whose discoveries contributed to the global development of the oil industry.

In 1974, the Rzeszów University of Technology, the only technical university in Podkarpacie, was named after Ignacy Łukasiewicz. The senate of the university unanimously adopted a resolution “on the support of activities aimed at establishing by the Parliament of the Republic of Poland the year 2022 as Ignacy Łukasiewicz’s year”.

Ignacy Łukasiewicz was born on March 8, 1822. He lived in the Subcarpathian region throughout his life. He was an independence activist, pharmacist, designer of the world’s first oil lamp, and a pioneer of the oil industry in Europe.

On his initiative, some of the world’s oldest companies and crude oil mines were established in the area of ​​Gorlice, Jasło and Krosno. At the turn of 1852 and 1853, Łukasiewicz, in cooperation with Jan Zeh, obtained a distillate called the new camphine. Using laboratory techniques, they obtained kerosene by distilling crude oil, and the process was patented at the Technical Patent Office in Vienna.