Sidney Loeb

Sidney Loeb was an American-Israeli chemical engineer and desalination pioneer, born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1917 and died in Omer, Israel, on 11 December 2008 aged 91. He did original membrane work in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles, before moving to Israel, and spent the last 38 years of his life as a professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. In 1973 he invented the method of generating power by pressure retarded osmosis, which draws energy from the salinity difference between fresh and salt water and is the basis of salinity gradient power.