Jean Paul Getty (December 15, 1892 – June 6, 1976) was an American industrialist who lived his last 24 years in the United Kingdom. He founded the Getty Oil Company, and in 1957 Fortune magazine named him the richest living American. At his death, he was worth more than $2 billion. A book published in 1996 ranked him as the 67th richest American who ever lived, based on his wealth as a percentage of the gross national product.
Getty was an avid c...
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Jean Paul Getty (December 15, 1892 – June 6, 1976) was an American industrialist who lived his last 24 years in the United Kingdom. He founded the Getty Oil Company, and in 1957 Fortune magazine named him the richest living American. At his death, he was worth more than $2 billion. A book published in 1996 ranked him as the 67th richest American who ever lived, based on his wealth as a percentage of the gross national product.
Getty was an avid collector of art and antiquities; his collection formed the basis of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California, and over $661 million of his estate was left to the museum after his death.
Born into George Getty's family in the petroleum business in Minneapolis, Minnesota, he was one of the first people in the world with a fortune estimated at over one billion U.S. dollars.
He enrolled at the University of Southern California, then at University of California, Berkeley before graduating in 1914 from Magdalen College, Oxford with...
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