Abraham Pineo Gesner

Abraham Pineo Gesner (1797 to 1864) was a Nova Scotian physician and geologist, remembered chiefly for devising a process that made lamp oil from coal, which he named kerosene. He was born at Chipmans Corner in Cornwallis Township, Nova Scotia, one of twelve children of a Loyalist family. After a failed venture selling horses to the Caribbean and the United States he studied medicine in London, at St Bartholomew's Hospital and Guy's Hospital, while also attending lectures in mineralogy and geology. He qualified as a doctor of medicine in 1827 and settled in Parrsboro, Nova Scotia, as a travelling physician who collected mineral specimens on his rounds. In 1838 New Brunswick appointed him its Provincial Geologist and he moved to Saint John. His geological surveys were respected but his estimates of the province's mineral wealth proved too optimistic, and his post ended in 1843. He died in Halifax and is counted among the early figures of Canadian geology and natural history.