August Oetker

August Oetker, born on 6 January 1862 in Obernkirchen in the Electorate of Hesse and died on 10 January 1918 in Bielefeld, was a German inventor, food scientist and business person. He was the oldest of eight children and completed a doctoral thesis on the shape of pollen grains in 1888. In 1891 he bought the Aschoffsche pharmacy in Bielefeld and developed a baking agent meant to make the baking process reliable. From 1890 he sold it under the brand name Backin, which laid the basis for the family owned company later called the Oetker Group, and the company still uses the same recipe. He filed a patent in 1909 for a procedure for making long lasting baking powder or ready to bake flour. Through successful marketing the old pharmacy turned into a prosperous firm; he built his first manufacturing plant in 1900 and by 1906 had sold 50 million packages of Backin. After his death his grandson Rudolf August Oetker took over the company.