- Isaac Wolfson
Sir Isaac Wolfson, 1st Baronet FRS (
September 17 ,1897 –June 20 ,1991 ) was a businessman and philanthropist. He was chairman of The Great Universal Stores Limited 1947-1987 and established theWolfson Foundation .Isaac Wolfson was the son of a
Jewish cabinet maker, Solomon Wolfson, an immigrant fromRajgród ,Poland who settled in the Gorbals inGlasgow ,Scotland . His mother was Nechi Surah Wilamowski. He was educated atQueen's Park School , Glasgow. His significant fortune was based on a very successfulmail order business,Great Universal Stores . He joined the company as a merchandising controller in 1932, becoming a managing director in the same year. He was appointed Chairman in the late 1940s and retired in 1987, to be succeeded byLeonard Wolfson , his son.Wolfson's business interests extended to finance; he was an early backer of
James Goldsmith , and after under writing thehire purchase agreements ofwashing machine entrepreneur John Bloom atRolls Razor , withdrew financial support in 1964, which led to the company's voluntaryliquidation .citeweb|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,939063,00.html?promoid=googlep|title=Trouble in Never-Never Land|publisher=Time Magazine|date=July 24, 1964|accessdate=2008-04-12]In 1955, Wolfson established the Wolfson Foundation, to aid in the advancement of education, health and youth activities. This supported the establishment of
Wolfson College, Oxford (where he was a "Founder Fellow") andWolfson College, Cambridge among many other projects over the years. Professorships named after him exist at Bar-Ilan, Haifa, Jerusalem, Oxford and Tel Aviv.Wolfson married Edith Specterman in 1926. She was a Vice-President of the English Jewish Welfare Board. Until 1960 he lived in
Worcester ; he then moved toLondon . He received abaronet cy in the Queen's 1962 New Year's Honours list, becoming Sir Isaac Wolfson of St. Marylebone. He was elected aFellow of the Royal Society in 1963 under [http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/page.asp?id=2228 Statute 12] . In 1971, he was awarded theFreedom of the City ofGlasgow . He died inIsrael in 1991.References
External links
* [http://www.npg.org.uk/live/search/person.asp?LinkID=mp63068 Photographs] in the National Portrait Gallery
* [http://www.wolfson.org.il/Index.asp?CategoryID=158&ArticleID=229 Website of the Edith Wolfson Medical Centre, Israel]
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