Ernest Gaston Joseph Solvay was a Belgian chemist, industrialist and philanthropist, who developed the ammonia-soda process for the manufacturing of soda ash from brine and limestone. The process is still used today and is named the Solvay Process. Patenting this process gave him great wealth and gave him the ability to do many other things. He founded a section of the VUB (Free University of Brussels) especially for the further investigation of chemistry and physics and to push the boundaries, large conferences were often held here, where difficult subjects were discussed. Aside from his scientific part he has also been a Belgian Senator and politician. Throughout his life he wrote plenty of books on different topics. In 1863 Solvay and his brother founded the Solvay company that is still one of the biggest companies in the world in chemicals and plastics.