Iakov Esipov

Date of birth unknown; died 1805 in St. Petersburg. Russian inventor in the sugar beet industry. From 1799 to 1801 he worked out the technology for the industrial extraction of sugar from sugar beets. In 1802 he built the first sugar beet refinery in Russia in the village of Aliab’evo, Tula Province, and began the commercial production of sugar. He also introduced the use of lime to purify the beet syrup, which is the process still used.