Robert Augustus Chesebrough

Robert Augustus Chesebrough (; January 9, 1837 – September 8, 1933) was an English-born American chemist who discovered petroleum jelly—which he marketed as Vaseline—and founder of the Chesebrough Manufacturing Company.

Life and career Born in London, England, to American parents on January 9, 1837, Chesebrough was raised in New York City. He married Margaret McCredy on April 28, 1864, and they had four children.

Chesebrough's success stemmed from a firm belief in his product. Before he began selling petroleum jelly, he tested it on his own cuts and burns. Chesebrough was still unable to sell any to drug stores until he traveled around New York demonstrating his miracle product. In front of an audience, he would burn his skin with acid or an open flame, then spread the clear jelly on his injuries while demonstrating past injuries, healed, he claimed, by his miracle product.

Chesebrough opened his first factory in 1870. The first known reference to the name Vaseline is in his U.S. patent: "I, Robert Chesebrough, have invented a new and useful product from petroleum which I have named 'Vaseline…'" . The word is believed to come from German Wasser (water) + (élaion, oil).

Chesebrough lived to be 96 years old and was such a believer in Vaseline that he claimed to have eaten "more than a teaspoon" of it every day. There is an unsubstantiated claim that "n his late fifties, ill with pleurisy, he made his nurse anoint him with the substance from head to toe—and promptly recovered." He is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York City.