Gottlieb Sigismund Constantin Kirchhoff (Russian: Константин Сигизмундович Кирхгоф, tr.
In 1811, he became the first person to convert starch into a sugar (corn syrup), by heating it with sulfuric acid in acid-catalyzed reaction.
[2] He also developed a method of refining vegetable oil, and established a factory that prepared two tons of refined oil a day.
[2] Since the sulfuric acid was not consumed, it was the first documented example of catalysis in organic chemistry.
(A term that Jöns Jacob Berzelius would later coin.)