William Appleton Coolidge (October 22, 1901 – May 24, 1992) was an American lawyer, financier, and art collector, known also as a philanthropist. From a Boston Brahmin background, he was Vice President of the Museum of Fine Arts and a noted art patron.
Early life
editHe was born in Boston, the son of the businessman Thomas Jefferson Coolidge, Jr., of the Old Colony Trust Co. and the United Fruit Company, and grandson of T. Jefferson Coolidge.[1][2][3] His mother Clara Gardner Amory was the daughter of the industrialist and company director Charles W. Amory.[4] He was one of four sons in the family.[5]
Coolidge graduated cum laude from Harvard College in 1924.[6] He went to Balliol College, Oxford, where he took a B.A. degree in 1927.[7] He was an investment banker at Jackson & Curtis).[8][9] Returning to Balliol in 1933, he spent a year in Oxford, before attending Harvard Law School.[7] An associate lawyer at Ropes & Gray from 1936, Coolidge left to work at the United States Department of the Navy.[10]
Wartime period and the genesis of the National Research Corporation
editIn 1940 Coolidge was involved with the entrepreneur Richard S. Morse as a founder in the early stages of what became the National Research Corporation (NRC).[11] This 1940 first vehicle for what became a career dealing in venture capital was called Enterprise Associates. This company then financed NRC, which when first incorporated in 1946 was called New Enterprises, Inc. It later took on the NRC name that was already in use.[1][12] Enterprise Associates was backed by around 20 investors, including Daniel Frost Comstock, Henry I. Harriman and William Rand, and Daniel Frost Comstock. Georges Doriot advised on investments.[8]
Not long after the company was set up, Coolidge moved in 1941 to Washington DC and engaged there in war work.[3][1] Towards the end of World War II NRC participated in an effort to produce dried blood plasma which would be shipped to the USSR.[13] The United States Army Quartermaster Corps wanted dried orange juice, and NRC set up a laboratory in Plymouth, Florida, using as for the blood project high vacuum drying.[14]
In 1944, Coolidge, with Samuel Murray Robinson and others, was a witness for the House Naval Affairs Committee chaired by Carl Vinson. He spoke on his work as head of the Finance Office in the Office of Naval Material.[15]
Later life
editWith the end of the war, NRC continued R&D in the areas of blood plasma, and juice concentrate, with advances in optics, based on technological advances made by Morse. Coolidge and his associate Richard Nichols moved to rationalize the resulting businesses, and Hugh Ferguson took over from Morse.[11] The Minute Maid Corporation emerged from this process.[14]
In 1946 Coolidge was instrumental in founding the MIT spinoff company Tracerlab, via an introduction for William Barbour of MIT to the American Research and Development Corporation.[16] In 1948 he was elected to the MIT Corporation.[17]
In 1963, NRC, by then producing specialized aerospace products and other lines, merged into Norton Company, listed on the NYSE in 1962. Coolidge and Ferguson gained seats on the new board.[11]
Legacy
editAfter Coolidge's death, his extensive art collection went to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.[18] The Coolidge Estate, at Topsfield, Massachusetts and Coolidge's home, passed to MIT.[19]
Coolidge contributed to the development of student accommodation at Balliol College, anonymously, while he was an undergraduate there.[20] He later set up the Atlantic Crossing Trust (Pathfinder scheme) system of travel grants at Balliol.[7] He gave money in 1990 to improve a building in Topsfield now called Coolidge Hall.[21]
References
edit- ^ a b c The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography: Being the History of the United States as Illustrated in the Lives of the Founders, Builders, and Defenders of the Republic, and of the Men and Women who are Doing the Work and Moulding the Thought of the Present Time. J. T. White. 1972. p. 52.
- ^ Louis, J. C.; Yazijian, Harvey (1980). The Cola Wars. Everest House. p. 129 note. ISBN 978-0-89696-052-7.
- ^ a b Sutton, Peter (January 1, 1995). The William Appleton Coolidge Collection. Museum of Fine Arts Boston. p. 10. ISBN 0878464530.
- ^ Farrell, Betty (1 January 1993). Elite Families: Class and Power in Nineteenth-Century Boston. SUNY Press. pp. 133–134. ISBN 978-0-7914-1593-1.
- ^ Wexler, Dorothy B. (1998). Reared in a Greenhouse: The Stories and Story, of Dorothy Winthrop Bradford. Taylor & Francis. p. 417 note 26. ISBN 978-0-8153-3254-1.
- ^ The International Year Book and Statesmen's Who's who. Vol. 26. Burke's Peerage Limited. 1978. p. 166.
- ^ a b c Kenny, Anthony (20 June 2019). Brief Encounters: Notes from a Philosopher's Diary. SPCK. p. 62. ISBN 978-0-281-07921-6.
- ^ a b Koistinen, David (22 September 2016). Confronting Decline: The Political Economy of Deindustrialization in Twentieth-Century New England. University Press of Florida. p. 86. ISBN 978-0-8130-5975-4.
- ^ Harvard Magazine. Vol. 95. Circulation Department. 1992. p. 102.
- ^ Brauer, Carl M. (1991). Ropes & Gray, 1865-1990. Ropes & Gray. p. 32.
- ^ a b c Cheape, Charles W. (1985). Family Firm to Modern Multinational: Norton Company, a New England Enterprise. Harvard University Press. pp. 266–267. ISBN 978-0-674-29261-1.
- ^ Johnson, Howard Wesley (24 August 2001). Holding the Center: Memoirs of a Life in Higher Education. MIT Press. p. 288. ISBN 978-0-262-60044-6.
- ^ Kendrick, Douglas Blair (1989). Blood Program in World War II: Supplemented by Experiences in the Korean War. Office of the Surgeon General, Department of the Army. p. 95.
- ^ a b The Rattle of Theta Chi. Theta Chi Fraternity. 1951. p. 6.
- ^ Affairs, United States Congress House Committee on Naval (1944). Hearings Before the Committee on Naval Affairs of the House of Representatives on Sundry Legislation Affecting the Naval Establishment, 1943-[1944], Seventy-eighth Congress, First-[second] Session. U.S. Government Printing Office. pp. 1569–1571.
- ^ Roberts, Edward B.; Eesley, Charles E. (2011). Entrepreneurial Impact: The Role of MIT. Now Publishers Inc. p. 60. ISBN 978-1-60198-478-4.
- ^ "William A. Coolidge Dies; Sheehan Gathering". MIT News, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 3 June 1992.
- ^ Sutton, Peter (January 1, 1995). The William Appleton Coolidge Collection. Museum of Fine Arts Boston. p. 23. ISBN 0878464530.
- ^ "History - Meredith Farm Topsfield MA". Meredith Farm Website.
- ^ "Brief History of Balliol College, Balliol College". www.balliol.ox.ac.uk.
- ^ "William A. Coolidge". Topsfield Fair Timeline.