Paul Burgan Weisz (July 2, 1919 – September 25, 2012) was a Czechoslovak-born American chemist, noted for his work on solid catalysts, which had a major impact on petroleum refining.
[1][2] Weisz produced 91 US patents and more than 180 papers, many related to diffusion behavior, which he applied to solid catalysts, dyeing, and the movement of chemicals in cells.
After graduating in the US, he carried out further work in these fields at the Bartol Research Foundation of the Franklin Institute and was seconded to MIT to help develop a long-range radio navigation system, LORAN.
[2] A 1960 paper, "Intracrystalline and Molecular-Shape-Selective Catalysis by Zeolite Salts",[4] coauthored with Vince Frilette, a Mobil colleague, became the foundation of shape-selective catalysis (which accelerated certain chemical reactions, but only for molecules of particular shape) and one of his most widely cited papers.
[1] The company permitted him a sabbatical period from 1964 to 1966 at ETH Zurich, where he earned a doctorate, setting the foundation for some of the fundamental laws of diffusion in dyeing.