Thomas Midgley, Jr

a "one-man environmental disaster"

Thomas Midgley (1889- 1944) was an engineer. He developed Tetraethyllead, or leaded petrol and chlorofluorocarbons. Working with General Motors, he called it ‘Ethyl” to avoid using the word lead. In 1923 he developed lead poisoning but this didn’t stop him. He joined with DuPont and ExxonMobil (back then Standard Oil) to continue production. His workers died and hallucinated.

He then invented chlorofluorocarbons or CFCs, which he called Freon. These destroyed the ozone layer until James Lovelock identified the problem.

Midgley contracted polio, and invented a sysyem of pulleys to turn himself over. This strangled him before he had the opportunity to invent anything worse.

http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1991915_1991909_1991817,00.html