Wilhelm August Lampadius

Wilhelm August Lampadius, 1772 to 1842, was a German chemist and metallurgist who taught at the Mining Academy in Freiberg for most of his career. He is remembered in energy history for gas lighting: in 1811 and 1812 he lit the street in front of his house in Freiberg with what Wikipedia calls the first hard coal gas lantern in Europe. His wider work included blowpipe analysis, a textbook on metal smelting, and the accidental discovery of carbon disulfide in 1796. He helped bring the chemical ideas of Lavoisier into Germany. His claim to the first coal gas street light is the one the article states, and the gas works that followed are a separate story from his single lantern.