Career
He was listed on 925 United States utility patents, making him the all-time twelfth most prolific inventor and third among United States inventors as of July 7, 2015. Time magazine"s millennium issue recognized him as second to Thomas Edison in this regard. The article omitted non-United States citizens.
De Groote invented and patented many of the de-emulsifying agents that separate crude oil from salt, sulfur, and water.
Without de-emulsification, most of the oil pumped in the United States for the last century would have been too corrosive for pipelines or tankers and would have been discarded. Petrolite was De Groote"s employer of 36 years.
Of Dutch-Jewish ancestry, De Groote was born in Wheeling, West Virginia on February 27, 1895, to Luis De Groote and Jennie De Groote (née Fuld). He attended the Sistersville, West Virginia High School.
De Groote graduated from Ohio State University in 1915 with a degree in chemical engineering.
He took a second chemical engineering degree in 1942, also from Ohio State, and was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Science in 1955. De Groote, in his work in flavorings at the Mellon Institute, was rumored to have been hired by Coca Cola to re-formulate its syrups to eliminate the alcoholic ingredients that were outlawed during prohibition (the company does not acknowledge any changes to its recipes). De Groote died on February 3, 1963, in Saint Louis, Missouri, at the age of 67.
