Who Invented Sunscreen?

Have you ever wondered who invented sunscreen? Well, there's not a clear answer. The ancient Greeks rubbed olive oil on their skin, giving them a natural sunscreen but not an effective one. Much later, in the 1930s, an Australian chemist named Milton Blake whipped up a sunburn cream in his kitchen. It tested well, and Hamilton Laboratories started selling it. Later, Eugene Schueller, founder of L'Oreal, invented sunscreen in 1936, at least according to L'Oreal. But Schueller's cream wasn't very effective at preventing sunburns, and the L'Oreal version didn't come close to providing the protection sun tanners expect today.

The first truly effective sunscreen was invented by Benjamin Greene in 1944. Greene was trying to determine how to protect American GIs from sunburn in the South Pacific. These first sunscreens did not use ingredients like oxybenzone or zinc oxide, but were more like paint, designed to shade the skin from the sun. The first person to invent a truly effective sunscreen was probably Howard Iserman around 1980. He created the first sunscreen recipes that included the ingredient PABA.

Today sunscreens use a variety of different substances to block the sun's rays, but they use two basic types of chemicals. The first group blocks sunlight, and includes opaque substances like zinc oxide. You'll see these on people's most sensitive parts, like the nose. Zinc oxide is also a mild antibacterial agent. The second group of sun blocks use chemicals like PABA that actually absorb ultraviolet light.

By blending these two types of substances together, sunscreen inventors can create sun protection in excess of SPF-30 ratings. It's a surprisingly difficult task; so don't try to whip up your own sunscreen in the kitchen. Homemade sunscreens are more likely to let your skin sizzle than protect it from the sun.