Marguerite Yourcenar

Country of origin: Belgium

Marguerite Yourcenar (8 June 1903 – 17 December 1987) was a Belgian-born French novelist and essayist. Winner of the Prix Femina and the Erasmus Prize, she was the first woman elected to the Académie française, in 1980, and the seventeenth person to occupy Seat 3.

To read more about Marguerite Yourcenar, visit her page on Wikipedia.

Julius Nieuwland

Country of origin: Belgium

Reverend Julius Aloysius (Arthur) Nieuwland, CSC, Ph.D., (14 February 1878 – 11 June 1936) was a Belgian-born Holy Cross priest and professor of chemistry and botany at the University of Notre Dame. He is known for his contributions to acetylene research and its use as the basis for one type of synthetic rubber, which eventually led to the invention of neoprene by DuPont.

To read more about Julius Nieuwland, visit his Wikipedia page.

Leo Hendrik Baekeland

Country of origin: Belgium

Leo Hendrik Baekeland (Sint-Martens-Latem (near Ghent), November 14, 1863 – February 23, 1944) was a Belgian chemist who invented Velox photographic paper (1893) and Bakelite (1907), an inexpensive, nonflammable, versatile, and popular plastic, which marks the beginning of the modern plastics industry.

To read more about Leo Hendrik Baekeland, visit his page on Wikipedia.