Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès (Draguigan, France, 24 October 1817 – Paris, France, 31 May 1880) was a French chemist and inventor who is famous for his invention of margarine.

By 1867, he was busily engaged in dairy research at the Imperial Farm, owned by Napoleon III, in Vincennes near Paris. He thus embarked on a program to produce butter artificially and so became a pioneer in biotechnology, which brought him lasting fame, i.e. the invention of margarine.

Many French citizens migrated from the farm to cities, creating a demand for butter, which could not be met. As a result butter prices soared, leading Napoleon III to offer a prize for anyone who could discover a process to manufacture a butter substitute.

He was able to mix rendered beef tallow and a small amount of water and milk to form his butter substitute. He called the mixture "oleomargarine", however, this name was already in place and was later shortened to just "margarine".

His original mixture was stable, much cheaper than butter, tasted nearly as good as butter and even had a pale yellow color. The chemist joined up with a Dutch company, who helped the manufacturing process and also made the product even cheaper by using fats derived from plant oils, especially olive oil. This new process resulted in a white product, so they added yellow dye to make it look more like butter and started creating a market for it. By the mid-1870s it was already being widely produced in the United States.

More Info: en.wikipedia.org