text: Engineer Zenobe Gramme invented the Gramme dynamo, the first generator to produce power on a commercial scale for industry. Chemist Ernest Solvay gave his name to the Solvay process for production of soda ash, an important chemical for many industrial uses. Ernest Solvay also acted as a major philanthropist and gave its name to the Solvay Institute of Sociology, the Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management and the International Solvay Institutes for Physics and Chemistry which are now part of the Université libre de Bruxelles. In 1911, he started a series of conferences, the Solvay Conferences on Physics and Chemistry, which have had a deep impact on the evolution of quantum physics and chemistry.
  Georges Lemaître of the Université catholique de Louvain is credited with proposing the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe in 1927.
  Three Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine were awarded to Walloons: Jules Bordet (Université libre de Bruxelles) in 1919, Albert Claude (ULB) together with Christian De Duve (UCLouvain) in 1974.
  In the present day, Bureau Greisch has acquired an international reputation as consulting engineer and architect in the fields of structures, civil engineering and buildings, including the Millau Viaduct in France.