List of Romanian inventors and discoverers

This is a list of Romanian Inventions and Discoveries of Romanian people or inventors/discoverers of Romanian heritage in alphabetical order.

A

• Ion I. Agârbiceanu: designer of the first gas laser in Romania.
• Andrei Alexandrescu: pioneering work on policy-based design implemented via template metaprogramming; co-inventor of D programming language.
• Ana Aslan: inventor of Gerovital, an anti-aging product widely used by famous personalities, such as Charles de Gaulle, John F. Kennedy, Indira Gandhi, Charlie Chaplin or Salvador Dalí.
• Gheorghe Atanasiu: inventor of infrared monochromator and creator of the method of optical determination of heat of dissociation.
• Ion Atanasiu: known as the originator of cerimetry, an analytical method based on cerium (IV) as titration reagent.

B

Victor Babeș

• Aurel Babeș: discovered the vaginal smear as screening test for cervical cancer.
• Victor Babeș: he discovered a parasitic sporozoan of the ticks, named Babesia (of the genus Babesiidae), and which causes a rare and severe disease called babesiosis; he also discovered cellular inclusions in rabies-infected nerve cells.
• Emanoil Bacaloglu: he is known for the "Bacaloglu pseudosphere". This is a surface of revolution for which the "Bacaloglu curvature" is constant.
• Radu Bălescu: he worked on the statistical physics of charged particles (Bălescu-Lenard collision operator).
• Alexandra Bellow: has made substantial contributions to the fields of ergodic theory, probability and analysis.
• George de Bothezat: inventor of the quadrotor helicopter (The Flying Octopus). He is considered one of the founders of aircraft flight dynamics.
• Ștefan Burileanu: inventor of the Burileanu antiaircraft cannon.

C

Ion Cantacuzino

Henri Coandă

• Ion Cantacuzino: his discoveries were relevant in the treatment of cholera, epidemic typhus, tuberculosis, and scarlet fever.
• Elie Carafoli: a pioneering contributor to the field of aerodynamics.
• Alexandru Ciurcu: invented alongside Just Buisson the reaction engine.
• Henri Coandă: aircraft designer, discovered the Coandă effect of fluidics.
• George Constantinescu: founded the Theory of Sonics, based on which he developed a number of applications including a synchronization gear. He is also known as the inventor of a mechanical torque converter, he applied to an experimental automobile as automatic transmission.
• Justin Capră: engineer and inventor; machines on which he worked included a jetpack, 72 fuel-efficient cars, 15 unconventional engines and seven aircraft, among others.

D

• Carol Davila: invented the Davila tincture used for the treatment of cholera, an opioid-based oral solution in use for symptomatic management of diarrhea.
• Anastase Dragomir: he invented the parachuted cell, a dischargeable chair from an aircraft or other vehicle, designed for emergency escapes, an early version of the modern ejection seat.

E

• Lazăr Edeleanu: he was the first chemist to synthesize amphetamine.

F

• Alexandru Froda: discovered Froda's theorem.

G

• Mihai Gavrilă: theoretical quantum physicist, discoverer of atomic dichotomy in ultra-intense, high frequency laser fields.
• Tudor Ganea: discovered the Eilenberg−Ganea conjecture.
• Billy Gladstone: among his inventions is the "Ludwig Gladstone Cymbal”, a rare jazz instrument.
• Rodrig Goliescu: he built the avioplan, the first fixed-wing aircraft with a tubular fuselage and the "Aviocoleopter", the first vertical take-off and landing aircraft.
• Corneliu E. Giurgea: coined the term nootropics, after discovering Piracetam and describing it as such.

H

Spiru Haret

• Spiru Haret: he made a fundamental contribution to the n-body problem in celestial mechanics by proving that using a third degree approximation for the disturbing forces implies instability of the major axes of the orbits, and by introducing the concept of secular perturbations in relation to this.
• Horia Hulubei: he is the first physicist in the world to obtain X-ray spectra in gases. He has important contributions in neutron physics and in the study of nuclear reactions.

I

• Theodor V. Ionescu: the inventor of a multiple-cavity magnetron in 1935, a hydrogen maser in 1947, 3D imaging for cinema/television in 1924 and hot deuterium plasma studies for controlled nuclear fusion in 1969, member of the Romanian Academy since 1955.

L

• Traian Lalescu: discovered the Lalescu sequence.
• Constantin Levaditi: alongside Karl Landsteiner, he discovered in 1909 the presence of the polio virus in tissues other than nervous.

M

• Preda Mihăilescu: known for his proof of Catalan's conjecture.
• Meinhard E. Mayer: an early contributor to the theory of vector-bosons (W and Z bosons) and electro-weak unification, which later became the Standard model, and an early advocate of the use of fiber bundles in gauge theory.
• Mina Minovici: famous for his extensive research regarding cadaverous alkaloids, putrefaction, simulated mind diseases, and criminal anthropology.
• Grigore Moisil: discovered Łukasiewicz-Moisil algebras, and he was elected a Member of the Romanian Academy
• Florentina I. Mosora: Romanian biophysicist who worked at first in the "Carol Davila" School of Medicine of the University of Bucharest, and subsequently in Belgium at the University of Liege; specialized in Nuclear Medicine, she applied nuclear medicine techniques and invented new methodology for the clinical investigation of type 2 diabetes.

N

Costin D. Nenițescu

• Mihai Nadin: he founded the world's first program in Computational Design.
• Costin D. Nenițescu: he found new methods for the synthesis of pirilium salts, of carbenes, tryptamine, serotonin, two new syntheses for the indole nucleus, and a new method of polymerisation of ethylene.

O

Hermann Oberth

• Hermann Oberth: along with the Russian Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and the American Robert Goddard, one of the founding fathers of rocketry and astronautics.
• Ștefan Odobleja: had supposedly established many of the major themes of cybernetics regarding cybernetics and systems thinking ten years before the work of Norbert Wiener was published in 1948.

P

Nicolae Paulescu

• George Emil Palade: discoverer of the ribosomes.
• Nicolae Paulescu: physiologist, research on endocrine pancreas secretion.
• Gheorghe Paun: prominent for work on membrane computing and the P system.
• Eugen Pavel: inventor of the Hyper CD-ROM, a 3D optical data storage medium with a claimed initial capacity of 10 TB and with a theoretical capacity of 1 PB on a single disc.
• Aurel Perșu: built the first car to have wheels inside its aerodynamic line.
• Ion N. Petrovici: he described the Alternating Asphygmo-Pyramidal Syndrome in occlusions of the carotid arteries.
• Petrache Poenaru: invented the world's first fountain pen.
• Ioan Pușcaș: Prof. Dr. he proposed the use of carbonic anhydrase (CA) inhibitor acetazolamide to heal peptic ulcers. In 1972 patented the first 100% efficient drug against gastroduodenal ulcer Ulcosilvanil.
• Dimitrie Pompeiu: his contributions were mainly in the field of mathematical analysis, complex functions theory, and rational mechanics. In an article published in 1929, he posed a challenging conjecture in integral geometry, now widely known as the Pompeiu problem.
• Nicolae Popescu: known for his contributions to Algebra and the theory of abelian categories with applications to rings and modules.
• Vasile M. Popov: he is well known for having developed a method to analyze stability of nonlinear dynamical systems, now known as Popov criterion.
• Alexandru Proca: he formulated the first mesonic theory of nuclear forces, including the equations for the mesonic vector field that carry his name (Proca's equations), elected post-mortem as a Member of the Romanian Academy.
• Ștefan Procopiu: he established the magnetic moment and determined the physical constant of magnetic moment, named magneton. The magneton is now known as the Bohr-Procopiu magneton.

R

Emil Racoviță

• Emil Racoviță: the founder of biospeleology.
• Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen: introduced into economics, inter alia, the concept of entropy from thermodynamics.

S

Anghel Saligny

• Anghel Saligny: built the first silos in the world made of reinforced concrete.
• Isaac Jacob Schoenberg: known for his discovery of splines.
• Robert Steinberg: invented the Steinberg representation, the Steinberg group in algebraic K-theory, and the Steinberg groups in Lie theory that yield finite simple groups over finite fields.
• Gabriel Sudan: known for the Sudan function, an important example in the theory of computation, similar to the Ackermann function.

T

• Ion Tănăsescu: he discovered the Lehmstedt-Tanasescu reaction, which was improved by Karl Lehmstedt.
• Victor Toma: Romanian inventor of the first Romanian computer-CIFA-1, built with his team in 1955.
• Nicolae Teclu: invented the Teclu burner.
• Șerban Țițeica: founder of Romanian school of theoretical physics, with major contributions in thermodynamics, statistical physics, quantum mechanics and atomic physics.

V

Aurel Vlaicu

Traian Vuia

• Nicolae Vasilescu-Karpen: inventor of the Karpen Pile.
• Aurel Vlaicu: built the first arrow-shaped airplane.
• Valeria Văcărescu : mechanical engineer.
• Gheorghe Vrânceanu: discovered the notion of non-holonomic spaces.
• Traian Vuia: built the first fixed wing aircraft that could take off by its own power, in which he made a powered hop.

W

• William F. Friedman: a cryptographer that invented the Index of Coincidence method (it broke Japan's PURPLE cipher for US forces).

See also

• Science and technology in Romania

External links

• Inventatori români (in Romanian)