William Merriam Burton (November 17, 1865 – December 29, 1954) was an American chemist who developed a widely used thermal cracking process for crude oil.

In 1886, he received a Bachelor of Science degree at Western Reserve University.

Burton initially worked for the Standard Oil refinery at Whiting, Indiana.

The process of thermal cracking invented by Burton, which became U.S. patent 1,049,667 on January 7, 1913, doubled the yield of gasoline that can be extracted from crude oil.

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