American chemist who developed a thermal cracking process for increasing the proportion of gasoline obtainable from crude petroleum.

Burton began work as a chemist at the Standard Oil Co. (Indiana) refinery at Whiting, Ind., in 1890, rising swiftly to serve as president from 1918 to 1927. Crude oil, a mixture of various hydrocarbons, can be separated into several groups of constituents by physical means, commonly distillation. His thermal cracking process, patented in 1913, utilized chemical methods that doubled the yield of gasoline by transforming many of the less volatile components into gasoline. Although other refining techniques have since been developed, the Burton process is still widely used.