Irénée du Pont


Irénée du Pont I was a U.S. businessman, former president of the DuPont company and head of the Du Pont trust.

Biography

Early life

He was born on December 21, 1876, in New Castle, Delaware. He was a descendant of Eleuthère Irénée du Pont. He graduated from Phillips Academy in 1894 and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1897. While at MIT, he was a member of the Phi Beta Epsilon fraternity, where he was one of the first brothers and to which he contributed more than $4,000,000 over the course of his lifetime.

Career

He worked for Fenn's Manufacturing Contracting Company for a number of years before he joined DuPont. He was president of DuPont from 1919 to 1925. He oversaw DuPont at a time when eight workers were fatally poisoned with tetraethyl lead while he issued statements about there being "slight difficulties". He retired from the board of directors of DuPont in 1958.

Personal life

He built a mansion in Varadero, Cuba, which he named Xanadu. In 1957, Fortune estimated his wealth at between $200 million and $400 million, making him one of the two richest members of the Du Pont family at that time, and one of the twenty richest Americans.
In the 1930s, he was a proponent of eugenics and racial superiority theories, and supported right-wing political groups. He may have been influential in the collaboration of the DuPont conglomerate with German companies after the rise of Nazism and well into World War II.
He died on December 19, 1963, in Wilmington, Delaware.