Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès

Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès (Draguignan, October 24, 1817-Paris, May 31, 1880) was a French chemist.

He was the son of a school teacher. In 1838 he obtained a job at the Hôtel-Dieu hospital in Paris and began publishing articles on applied chemistry.

He became famous by patenting margarine in 1869 and received an award from the French government, led at that time by Emperor Napoleon III. In 1871 he sold his invention to the Dutch firm of Jurgens, which would later merge with Samuel van den Bergh forming the Margarine Unie factory, one of the pillars of Unilever.