Ernest Gaston Joseph Solvay (April 16, 1838 - May 26, 1922) was a Belgian chemist, industrialist and philanthropist. In 1861, he developed the ammonia-soda process for the manufacturing of soda ash (anhydrous sodium carbonate) from brine (as a source of sodium chloride) and limestone (as a source of calcium carbonate). The process was an improvement over the earlier Leblanc process. He founded the company Solvay & Cie and established his first factory at Couillet in 1863 and further perfected the process until 1872, when he patented it. The exploitation of his patents brought Solvay considerable wealth, which he used for philanthropic purposes, including the establishment in 1894 of the "Institut des Sciences Sociales" (ISS) or Institute for Sociology at the Free University of Brussels. In 1911, he began a series of important conferences in physics, known as the Solvay Conferences. He died in 1922 at the age of 84.