Eugene Meyer

Eugene Isaac Meyer (October 31, 1875 – July 17, 1959) was an American banker, businessman, financier, and newspaper publisher. He was the fifth chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1930 to 1933. Meyer purchased The Washington Post in 1933, and was its publisher from 1933 to 1946, with the paper staying in his family throughout the rest of the 20th century. He was the first president of the World Bank Group from June to December 1946.

His daughter, Katharine Graham, was the titular head of The Washington Post from 1963 until her death in 2001.

Meyer was born in 1875 to a Jewish family in Los Angeles, California, descended from a long line of rabbis and civic leaders. He was one of eight children of Harriet (née Newmark) and Marc Eugene Meyer. His mother was the daughter of Joseph Newmark, an early Jewish activist and rabbi in Los Angeles. He grew up in San Francisco. He attended the University of California, Berkeley, but dropped out after one year. He later enrolled at Yale University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in 1895, and a Doctorate of Law.

After college, Meyer went to work for Lazard Frères, where his father was a partner, but quit in 1901 after four years and went out on his own. He was a successful investor and speculator, and owned a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. By 1915, when he was forty, he was worth $40 million.

In April 1918, exactly a year after the US entry into World War 1, he was made the director of the US government's War Finance Corporation.

In 1920, Meyer teamed with William H. Nichols of General Chemical to help fulfill his vision of a bigger, better chemical company. Meyer and Nichols combined five smaller chemical companies to create the Allied Chemical & Dye Corporation, which later became Allied Chemical Corp., which in turn became part of AlliedSignal, the forerunner of Honeywell’s specialty materials business. Both men have buildings named after them at Honeywell's Morris Plains, New Jersey, headquarters.

Meyer went to Washington, D.C., during World War I as a dollar-a-year man for Woodrow Wilson, becoming the head of the War Finance Corporation and serving there long after the end of hostilities. President Calvin Coolidge named him as chairman of the Federal Farm Loan Board in 1927.

Herbert Hoover promoted him to Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board in 1930. He took on an additional half-year post in 1932 as chief of the new Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which was Hoover's unsuccessful attempt to aid companies by providing loans to businesses. After Franklin D. Roosevelt became president, Meyer resigned his Fed position on May 10, 1933.

Meyer married Agnes Elizabeth Ernst, a Lutheran, in 1910; they had five children, including the future Katharine Graham, and another daughter, Florence Meyer (Mrs. Oskar Homolka). Meyer's older sister, Florence Meyer Blumenthal, was noted for the philanthropic organization she formed, the Franco-American Florence Blumenthal Foundation, which awarded the Prix Blumenthal. His brother, Edgar J. Meyer, married to Leila Saks Meyer, the daughter of Andrew Saks, perished in the sinking of the RMS Titanic.

Meyer died at age 83 on July 17, 1959, at George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C., where he had been under treatment for a heart ailment and cancer.

Eugene Meyer Elementary School in Washington, D.C., was named in Meyer's honor in 1963. The school closed in 2008, and the building has since been used as swing space by District of Columbia Public Schools.