Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index Abraham Pineo Gesner (1797-1864) was a physician and geologist in Nova Scotia , Canada who in 1854 invented a process for distilling kerosene from coal. This product, also called paraffin, was cheaper than whale oil, and therefore resulted in a reduction in whale hunting. This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.