John D. Rockefeller

John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937) was an American businessman and philanthropist, founder of the Standard Oil Company and the richest man of his time. Born in upstate New York and raised in Cleveland, he began as a bookkeeper, entered oil refining in 1863 and by the 1880s controlled some ninety percent of American refining through methods that made him the chief target of the trust-busting movement; the Supreme Court broke up Standard Oil in 1911. He gave away more than half a billion dollars, founding the University of Chicago, the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research and the Rockefeller Foundation. Random Reminiscences of Men and Events is his only book.