Witold Zglenicki

Witold Leon Julian Zglenicki (1850 to 1904) was a Polish scientist, geologist and philanthropist who worked in Azerbaijan, and he was the first to propose extracting oil from the seabed of the Caspian Sea. Born in Stara Wargawa near Kutno, he graduated in mathematics and physics in Warsaw and from the Saint Petersburg Mining Institute with honors in 1875, worked in mines and metallurgical plants in Poland, and in 1891 moved to Baku as an expert at the Baku Expert Office. There he worked on modernizing oil extraction, developing the concept of the offshore drilling platform and several inventions that made drilling faster and deeper, including a device for measuring the curvature of oil wells, and he identified the locations of several oil fields on the Caspian seabed, although his proposals for seabed extraction were not accepted in his lifetime. In 1900 the Qajar shah Mozaffar ad-Din Shah awarded him the Order of the Lion and the Sun. He bequeathed his oil income and fortune to Polish science and charity, which earned him the title Polish Nobel.