Rudolf Diesel

Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel was a German mechanical engineer, born in Paris to Bavarian immigrant parents, who invented the engine that bears his name. Trained at the Technical University of Munich under refrigeration pioneer Carl von Linde, he worked for major industrial firms including Sulzer, Linde, MAN and Krupp while developing his own theory of a highly efficient internal combustion engine, publishing his design principles in the 1893 treatise Theory and Construction of a Rational Heat-engine after receiving his foundational German patent the previous year. His first successful working prototype, the Motor 250/400, was tested in 1897 and proved an immediate commercial success, offering markedly better fuel efficiency than contemporary steam engines and eventually finding wide use in stationary machinery, ships, submarines and locomotives. Both the diesel engine and diesel fuel are named for him, and his invention became one of the most consequential engine designs in industrial history.