John Davison Rockefeller Sr. July 8, β May 23, was an American businessman and philanthropist. He was one of the wealthiest Americans of all time [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] and one of the richest people in modern history. He became an assistant bookkeeper at age 16 and went into several business partnerships beginning at age 20, concentrating his business on oil refining. Rockefeller founded the Standard Oil Company in He ran it until and remained its largest shareholder.
In his retirement, he focused his energy and wealth on philanthropy, especially regarding education, medicine, higher education, and modernizing the Southern United States. Standard Oil was the greatest business trust in the United States. Through use of the company's monopoly power , Rockefeller revolutionized the petroleum industry and, through corporate and technological innovations, was instrumental in both widely disseminating and drastically reducing the production cost of oil.
Rockefeller's company and business practices came under criticism, particularly in the writings of author Ida Tarbell. The Supreme Court ruled in that Standard Oil must be dismantled for violation of federal antitrust laws. It was broken up into 34 separate entities, which included companies that became ExxonMobil , Chevron Corporation , and othersβsome of which remain among the largest companies by revenue worldwide.
Rockefeller spent much of the last 40 years of his life in retirement at Kykuit , his estate in Westchester County, New York, defining the structure of modern philanthropy, along with other key industrialists such as Andrew Carnegie. He and Carnegie gave form and impetus through their charities to the work of Abraham Flexner , who in his essay "Medical Education in America" emphatically endowed empiricism as the basis for the US medical system of the 20th century.
Rockefeller was the founder of the University of Chicago and Rockefeller University , and funded the establishment of Central Philippine University in the Philippines.
