Mr Sollitt started his career when he was just 15 after being recruited by the Rowntree's cream department to hand pipe dark chocolate treats, Black Magic.
He was soon transferred to the Creme Experimentation Department where he become a confectioner and master of his craft.
By 1962, he was heading up a team tasked with inventing a new luxurious chocolate which would encase a peppermint fondant.
With a warning to keep the project top secret, bosses asked him to create the wafer-thin mint, and the process he developed for stopping the chocolate's liquid centre for oozing out has still never been revealed.
His creation went on to sell billions, and they are still shipped to more than 50 countries around the world from the After Eight factory in Halifax, West Yorkshire.
Driven by a great love for his work, he collected all sorts of packaging and posters relating to his favourite creation, and even came out of retirement last year to make an enormous three kilo version of the After Eight to mark the chocolate's 50th anniversary.
And not content with creating delicious delights for the masses, generous Mr Sollitt was also known for leaving sweets on a tray outside his office for colleagues to take home.
He also devoted time to raising money for charity - making giant Easter eggs for Children In Need - and trained many younger confectioners in their craft.
Alex Hutchinson, a historian for Nestle which owns Rowntree's, said: "Brian's impact on the British confectionery industry is incalculable.
"It is easy to forget that the sweets we pick up in the shops today are things that would have been handmade lovingly in the early stages of development by Brian.
"He spent months, or sometimes years, agonising over the technical details of his creations. He was an incredible man. He was asked to come up with this new chocolate and he did."
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