In 1874, Herman Frasch, a German immigrant, began investigations into the young petroleum industry. His first achievement was an improved method of refining paraffin wax; he sold this patent to Standard Oil. John D. Rockefeller, himself, persuaded Frasch to become a consulting chemist for Standard Oil. He developed many improvements in oil refining. Later, Frasch devised a method of desulfurizing petroleum products by reacting them with copper oxide. The process was so successful, it totally revolutionized the entire petroleum industry and he received a substantial number of shares of Standard Oil for the purchase of this patent.​

Frasch heard about a large sulfur deposit in the Calcasieu Parish of Louisiana. The deposit was overlain with quicksand and had defied several conventional shaft-sinking attempts. He conceived a method of melting the sulfur underground with superheated water and pumping the molten sulfur to the surface. The Frasch Process remained the backbone of the nation’s elemental sulfur industry until 1982.​

In 1912, Herman Frasch received the prestigious Perkin Medal on behalf of the Society of Chemical Industry, the American Chemical Society and the American Electrochemical Society.​

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