Irving Saul Shapiro was an American lawyer and businessman, best known for being the first lawyer, and the first person outside the Dupont family, to become CEO of DuPont

DuPont

E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company , commonly referred to as DuPont, is an American chemical company that was founded in July 1802 as a gunpowder mill by Eleuthère Irénée du Pont. DuPont was the world's third largest chemical company based on market capitalization and ninth based on revenue in 2009...

. Shapiro served as Dupont chairman from December 1973 to 1981. In 1987, he took over leadership of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Howard Hughes Medical Institute is a United States non-profit medical research organization based in Chevy Chase, Maryland. It was founded by the American businessman Howard Hughes in 1953. It is one of the largest private funding organizations for biological and medical research in the United...

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Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota

Minnesota

Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...

, Shapiro was the son of Lithuanian Jewish

Lithuanian Jews

Lithuanian Jews or Litvaks are Jews with roots in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania:...

 immigrants. His father was a dry cleaner and tailor

Tailor

A tailor is a person who makes, repairs, or alters clothing professionally, especially suits and men's clothing.Although the term dates to the thirteenth century, tailor took on its modern sense in the late eighteenth century, and now refers to makers of men's and women's suits, coats, trousers,...

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Other Sources

• "In Memoriam: A Tribute to Irving S. Shapiro." HHMI Bulletin. (December 2001). Page 44.
• Irving S. Shapiro. Transcript of an interview conducted by James J. Bohning and Bernadette R. McNulty in Wilmington, Delaware on 15 December 1994. Chemical Heritage Foundation (2010). Collected 25 April 2011. Web.
• "Irving S. Shapiro, DuPont Corporation: 1974 - 1981." American Business Leaders of the Twentieth Century: Chemicals & Industrial. Harvard Business School Leadership (2011). Collected 25 April 2011. Web.

External links

• Harvard Business School Leadership
• http://www.williamzacha.com/gallery/product.php?productid=16691&cat=283&page=2Bata Bheag: Portrait of Irving S. Shapiro by Charles Marchant Stevenson
  Charles Marchant Stevenson
  Charles Marchant Stevenson was an American artist, born to Mildred and in Washington, D.C.-Early years:Stevenson spent his early years at his...
  
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