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The Most Famous

BUSINESSPEOPLE from United States

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This page contains a list of the greatest American Businesspeople. The pantheon dataset contains 601 Businesspeople, 267 of which were born in United States. This makes United States the birth place of the most number of Businesspeople.

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary American Businesspeople of all time. This list of famous American Businesspeople is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of American Businesspeople.

Photo of Howard Hughes

1. Howard Hughes (1905 - 1976)

With an HPI of 80.44, Howard Hughes is the most famous American Businessperson.  His biography has been translated into 62 different languages on wikipedia.

Howard Robard Hughes Jr. (December 24, 1905 – April 5, 1976) was an American aerospace engineer, business magnate, film producer, investor, philanthropist, and pilot. He was best known during his lifetime as one of the richest and most influential people in the world. He first became prominent as a film producer, and then as an important figure in the aviation industry. Later in life, he became known for his eccentric behavior and reclusive lifestyle—oddities that were caused in part by his worsening obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), chronic pain from a near-fatal plane crash, and increasing deafness. As a film tycoon, Hughes gained fame in Hollywood beginning in the late 1920s, when he produced big-budget and often controversial films such as The Racket (1928), Hell's Angels (1930), and Scarface (1932). He later acquired the RKO Pictures film studio in 1948, recognized then as one of the Big Five studios of Hollywood's Golden Age, although the production company struggled under his control and ultimately ceased operations in 1957. Through his interest in aviation and aerospace travel, Hughes formed the Hughes Aircraft Company in 1932, hiring numerous engineers, designers, and defense contractors.: 163, 259  He spent the rest of the 1930s and much of the 1940s setting multiple world air speed records and building the Hughes H-1 Racer (1935) and the gigantic H-4 Hercules (the Spruce Goose, 1947), the largest flying boat in history with the longest wingspan of any aircraft from the time it was built until 2019. He acquired and expanded Trans World Airlines and later acquired Air West, renaming it Hughes Airwest. Hughes won the Harmon Trophy on two occasions (1936 and 1938), the Collier Trophy (1938), and the Congressional Gold Medal (1939) all for his achievements in aviation throughout the 1930s. He was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1973 and was included in Flying magazine's 2013 list of the 51 Heroes of Aviation, ranked at No. 25.During his final years, Hughes extended his financial empire to include several major businesses in Las Vegas, such as real estate, hotels, casinos, and media outlets. Known at the time as one of the most powerful men in the state of Nevada, he is largely credited with transforming Vegas into a more refined cosmopolitan city. After years of mental and physical decline, Hughes died of kidney failure in 1976. His legacy is maintained through the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Howard Hughes Corporation.

Photo of Bill Gates

2. Bill Gates (1955 - )

With an HPI of 80.36, Bill Gates is the 2nd most famous American Businessperson.  His biography has been translated into 158 different languages.

William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American businessman, investor, philanthropist, and writer best known for co-founding the software giant Microsoft, along with his childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of chairman, chief executive officer (CEO), president, and chief software architect, while also being its largest individual shareholder until May 2014. He was a prominent pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s. Gates was born and raised in Seattle, Washington. In 1975, he and Allen founded Microsoft in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Gates led the company as its chairman and chief executive officer until stepping down as CEO in January 2000, succeeded by Steve Ballmer, but he remained chairman of the board of directors and became chief software architect. During the late 1990s, he was criticized for his business tactics, which were considered anti-competitive. This opinion has been upheld by numerous court rulings. In June 2008, Gates transitioned into a part-time role at Microsoft and full-time work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the private charitable foundation he and his then-wife Melinda had established in 2000. He stepped down as chairman of the Microsoft board in February 2014 and assumed the role of technology adviser to support newly appointed CEO Satya Nadella. In March 2020, Gates left his board positions at Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway to focus on his philanthropic efforts on climate change, global health and development, and education.Since 1987, Gates has been included in the Forbes list of the world's billionaires. From 1995 to 2017, he held the Forbes title of the richest person in the world every year except in 2008 and from 2010 to 2013. In October 2017, he was surpassed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who had an estimated net worth of US$90.6 billion compared to Gates's net worth of US$89.9 billion at the time. In the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans in 2023, he was ranked sixth with a wealth of $115.0 billion. As of March 2024, Gates has an estimated net worth of US$151 billion, making him the fifth-richest person in the world according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.Later in his career and since leaving day-to-day operations at Microsoft in 2008, Gates has pursued other business and philanthropic endeavors. He is the founder and chairman of several companies, including BEN, Cascade Investment, TerraPower, bgC3, and Breakthrough Energy. He has donated sizable amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, reported to be the world's largest private charity. Through the foundation, he led an early 21st century vaccination campaign that significantly contributed to the eradication of the wild poliovirus in Africa. In 2010, Gates and Warren Buffett founded The Giving Pledge, whereby they and other billionaires pledge to give at least half of their wealth to philanthropy.

Photo of John D. Rockefeller

3. John D. Rockefeller (1839 - 1937)

With an HPI of 77.60, John D. Rockefeller is the 3rd most famous American Businessperson.  His biography has been translated into 70 different languages.

John Davison Rockefeller Sr. (July 8, 1839 – May 23, 1937) was an American business magnate and philanthropist. He was one of the wealthiest Americans of all time and one of the richest people in modern history. Rockefeller was born into a large family in Upstate New York who moved several times before eventually settling in Cleveland. He became an assistant bookkeeper at age 16 and went into several business partnerships beginning at age 20, concentrating his business on oil refining. Rockefeller founded the Standard Oil Company in 1870. He ran it until 1897 and remained its largest shareholder. In his retirement, he focused his energy and wealth on philanthropy, especially regarding education, medicine, higher education, and modernizing the American South. Rockefeller's wealth soared as kerosene and gasoline grew in importance, and he became the richest person in the country, controlling 90% of all oil in the United States at his peak in 1900. Oil was used in lamps, and as a fuel for ships and automobiles. Standard Oil was the greatest business trust in the United States. Through use of the company's monopoly power, Rockefeller revolutionized the petroleum industry and, through corporate and technological innovations, was instrumental in both widely disseminating and drastically reducing the production cost of oil. Rockefeller's company and business practices came under criticism, particularly in the writings of author Ida Tarbell. The Supreme Court ruled in 1911 that Standard Oil must be dismantled for violation of federal antitrust laws. It was broken up into 34 separate entities, which included companies that became ExxonMobil, Chevron Corporation, and others—some of which remain among the largest companies by revenue worldwide. Consequently, Rockefeller became the country's first billionaire, with a fortune worth nearly 2% of the national economy. His personal wealth was estimated in 1913 at $900 million, which was almost 3% of the US gross domestic product (GDP) of $39.1 billion that year.Rockefeller spent much of the last 40 years of his life in retirement at Kykuit, his estate in Westchester County, New York, defining the structure of modern philanthropy, along with other key industrialists such as retired steel magnate Andrew Carnegie. His fortune was used chiefly to create the modern systematic approach of targeted philanthropy through the creation of foundations that supported medicine, education, and scientific research. His foundations pioneered developments in medical research and were instrumental in the near-eradication of hookworm in the American South, and yellow fever in the United States. He and Carnegie gave form and impetus through their charities to the work of Abraham Flexner, who in his essay "Medical Education in America" emphatically endowed empiricism as the basis for the US medical system of the 20th century.Rockefeller was the founder of the University of Chicago and Rockefeller University, and funded the establishment of Central Philippine University in the Philippines. He was a devout Northern Baptist and supported many church-based institutions. He adhered to total abstinence from alcohol and tobacco throughout his life. For advice, he relied closely on his wife Laura Spelman Rockefeller: they had four daughters and a son together. He was a faithful congregant of the Erie Street Baptist Mission Church, taught Sunday school, and served as a trustee, clerk, and occasional janitor. Religion was a guiding force throughout his life, and he believed it to be the source of his success. Rockefeller was also considered a supporter of capitalism based on a perspective of social Darwinism, and he was quoted often as saying, "The growth of a large business is merely a survival of the fittest."

Photo of Warren Buffett

4. Warren Buffett (1930 - )

With an HPI of 77.27, Warren Buffett is the 4th most famous American Businessperson.  His biography has been translated into 95 different languages.

Warren Edward Buffett ( BUF-it; born August 30, 1930) is an American businessman, investor, and philanthropist who currently serves as the co-founder, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. As a result of his immense investment success, Buffett is one of the best-known investors in the world. As of March 2024, he had a net worth of $134 billion, making him the seventh-richest person in the world.Buffett was born in Omaha, Nebraska. The son of US congressman and businessman Howard Buffett, he developed an interest in business and investing during his youth. He entered the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1947 before graduating from the University of Nebraska at 19. He went on to graduate from Columbia Business School, where he molded his investment philosophy around the concept of value investing pioneered by Benjamin Graham. He attended New York Institute of Finance to focus on his economics background and soon pursued a business career. He later began various business ventures and investment partnerships, including one with Graham. He created Buffett Partnership Ltd. in 1956 and his investment firm eventually acquired a textile manufacturing firm, Berkshire Hathaway, assuming its name to create a diversified holding company. Buffett emerged as the company's chairman and majority shareholder in 1970. In 1978, fellow investor and long-time business associate Charlie Munger joined Buffett as vice-chairman.Since 1970, Buffett has presided as the chairman and largest shareholder of Berkshire Hathaway, one of America's foremost holding companies and world's leading corporate conglomerates. He has been referred to as the "Oracle" or "Sage" of Omaha by global media as a result of having accumulated a massive fortune derived from his business and investment success. He is noted for his adherence to the principles of value investing, and his frugality despite his vast wealth.Buffett has pledged to give away 99 percent of his fortune to philanthropic causes, primarily via the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He founded the Giving Pledge in 2010 with Bill Gates, whereby billionaires pledge to give away at least half of their fortunes.

Photo of Jeff Bezos

5. Jeff Bezos (1964 - )

With an HPI of 76.68, Jeff Bezos is the 5th most famous American Businessperson.  His biography has been translated into 86 different languages.

Jeffrey Preston Bezos ( BAY-zohss; né Jorgensen; born January 12, 1964) is an American businessman, media proprietor and investor. He is the founder, executive chairman, and former president and CEO of Amazon, the world's largest e-commerce and cloud computing company. He is the wealthiest person in the world, with a net worth of about US$199.1 billion as of March 2, 2024. He was also the wealthiest from 2017 to 2021, according to both the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and Forbes.Bezos was born in Albuquerque and raised in Houston and Miami. He graduated from Princeton University in 1986 with degrees in electrical engineering and computer science. He worked on Wall Street in a variety of related fields from 1986 to early 1994. Bezos founded Amazon in mid 1994 on a road trip from New York City to Seattle. The company began as an online bookstore and has since expanded to a variety of other e-commerce products and services, including video and audio streaming, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence. It is the world's largest online sales company, the largest Internet company by revenue, and the largest provider of virtual assistants and cloud infrastructure services through its Amazon Web Services branch. Bezos founded the aerospace manufacturer and sub-orbital spaceflight services company Blue Origin in 2000. Blue Origin's New Shepard vehicle reached space in 2015 and afterwards successfully landed back on Earth; he flew into space on Blue Origin NS-16 in 2021. He also purchased the major American newspaper The Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million and manages many other investments through his venture capital firm, Bezos Expeditions. In September 2021, Bezos co-founded Altos Labs with Mail.ru founder Yuri Milner.The first centibillionaire on the Forbes Real Time Billionaires Index and the second ever to have eclipsed the feat since Bill Gates in 1999, Bezos was named the "richest man in modern history" after his net worth increased to $150 billion in July 2018. In August 2020, according to Forbes, he had a net worth exceeding $200 billion. On July 5, 2021, Bezos stepped down as the CEO and president of Amazon and took over the role of executive chairman. Amazon Web Services CEO Andy Jassy succeeded Bezos as the CEO and president of Amazon. In October 2023, he was ranked second on the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans, with a net worth of $161 billion.

Photo of Vince McMahon

6. Vince McMahon (1945 - )

With an HPI of 74.11, Vince McMahon is the 6th most famous American Businessperson.  His biography has been translated into 49 different languages.

Vincent Kennedy McMahon ( mək-MAN; born August 24, 1945) is an American businessman and former professional wrestling promoter. McMahon, along with his wife Linda, is a co-founder of the modern WWE, the world's largest professional wrestling promotion. Outside of professional wrestling McMahon has occasionally ventured into promoting other sports; his projects have included the World Bodybuilding Federation and the XFL football league. He is the owner of Alpha Entertainment. McMahon graduated from East Carolina University with a degree in business in 1968, and began his tenure in professional wrestling as a commentator for WWE (then called the World Wide Wrestling Federation or WWWF) for most of the 1970s. He bought the company from his father, Vincent J. McMahon, in 1982 and almost monopolized the industry, which previously operated as separate entities across the United States. This led to the development of the annual event WrestleMania, which became one of the world's most successful professional wrestling events. WWE then faced industry competition from World Championship Wrestling (WCW) in the 1990s before purchasing and absorbing WCW in 2001. WWE also purchased the assets of the defunct Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) in 2003. McMahon has been involved in a number of WWE-related ventures. In 2014, he launched the WWE Network, a subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service. He also owned other WWE multimedia subsidiaries and a professional wrestling training facility. Outside of wrestling, McMahon joint-owned and operated the XFL American football league twice; both the 2001 and 2020 iterations folded after a single season. He also headed the short-lived World Bodybuilding Federation and co-owned the clothing brand Tapout. McMahon appeared on-screen for WWE from 1969 until the 2020s, initially as a personable play-by-play commentator. In 1997, he adopted the character of Mr. McMahon, portrayed as an irascible, villainous, swaggering tyrant who obsessed over maintaining control of his wrestling company and often growled the catchphrase "you're fired!" when dismissing an employee. Under the Mr. McMahon gimmick, which is considered by some to be WWE's greatest villainous character, he competed in wrestling matches and became a one-time WWE Champion, a one-time ECW Champion, a Royal Rumble winner, and a multi-time pay-per-view headliner. Following claims of hush-money agreements McMahon paid over affairs with former WWE employees, McMahon stepped down as CEO and chairman of WWE in June 2022, pending the conclusion of an internal investigation. He was replaced by his daughter, Stephanie McMahon. The following month, McMahon announced his retirement from WWE, but his return to WWE as executive chairman was confirmed in January 2023. That April, a merger was announced between WWE and Endeavor Group Holdings, owner of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) mixed martial arts promotion; McMahon served as the executive chairman of the new merged company, TKO Group Holdings (TKO). McMahon later resigned from TKO in January 2024 after allegations of sex trafficking and sexual assault. McMahon is currently under a federal probe.

Photo of David Rockefeller

7. David Rockefeller (1915 - 2017)

With an HPI of 71.43, David Rockefeller is the 7th most famous American Businessperson.  His biography has been translated into 45 different languages.

David Rockefeller (June 12, 1915 – March 20, 2017) was an American economist and investment banker who served as chairman and chief executive of Chase Manhattan Corporation. He was the oldest living member of the third generation of the Rockefeller family, and family patriarch from 2004 until his death in 2017. Rockefeller was the fifth son and youngest child of John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, and a grandson of John D. Rockefeller and Laura Spelman Rockefeller. He was noted for his wide-ranging political connections and foreign travel, in which he met with many foreign leaders. His fortune was estimated at $3.3 billion at the time of his death.

Photo of Tim Cook

8. Tim Cook (1960 - )

With an HPI of 70.98, Tim Cook is the 8th most famous American Businessperson.  His biography has been translated into 60 different languages.

Timothy Donald Cook (born November 1, 1960) is an American business executive who has been the chief executive officer of Apple Inc. Cook had previously been the company's chief operating officer under its co-founder Steve Jobs. Cook joined Apple in March 1998 as a senior vice president for worldwide operations, and then as executive vice president for worldwide sales and operations. He was appointed chief executive on August 24, 2011 after Jobs, who was ill and died that October, resigned. During his tenure as the chief executive, he has advocated for the political reform of international and domestic surveillance, cybersecurity, American manufacturing, and environmental preservation. Since 2011 when he took over Apple, to 2020, Cook doubled the company's revenue and profit, and the company's market value increased from $348 billion to $1.9 trillion. Cook is also on the boards of directors of Nike, Inc. and the National Football Foundation; he is a trustee of Duke University, his alma mater. Outside of Apple, Cook engages in philanthropy; in March 2015 he said he planned to donate his fortune to charity. In 2014, Cook became the first chief executive of a Fortune 500 company to publicly come out as gay.

Photo of Colonel Sanders

9. Colonel Sanders (1890 - 1980)

With an HPI of 70.87, Colonel Sanders is the 9th most famous American Businessperson.  His biography has been translated into 45 different languages.

Colonel Harland David Sanders (September 9, 1890 – December 16, 1980) was an American businessman and founder of fast food chicken restaurant chain Kentucky Fried Chicken (also known as KFC). He later acted as the company's brand ambassador and symbol. His name and image are still symbols of the company. Sanders held a number of jobs in his early life, such as steam engine stoker, insurance salesman, and filling station operator. He began selling fried chicken from his roadside restaurant in North Corbin, Kentucky, during the Great Depression. During that time, Sanders developed his "secret recipe" and his patented method of cooking chicken in a pressure fryer. Sanders recognized the potential of the restaurant franchising concept, and the first KFC franchise opened in South Salt Lake, Utah, in 1952. When his original restaurant closed, he devoted himself full-time to franchising his fried chicken throughout the country. The company's rapid expansion across the United States and overseas became overwhelming for Sanders. In 1964, then 73 years old, he sold the company to a group of investors led by John Y. Brown Jr. and Jack C. Massey for $2 million ($18.9 million today). However, he retained control of operations in Canada, and he became a salaried brand ambassador for Kentucky Fried Chicken. In his later years, he became highly critical of the food served by KFC restaurants, believing they had cut costs and allowed quality to deteriorate.

Photo of Philip Kotler

10. Philip Kotler (1931 - )

With an HPI of 70.50, Philip Kotler is the 10th most famous American Businessperson.  His biography has been translated into 42 different languages.

Philip Kotler (born May 27, 1931) is an American marketing author, consultant, and professor emeritus; the S. C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University (1962–2018). He is known for popularizing the definition of marketing mix. He is the author of over 80 books, including Marketing Management, Principles of Marketing, Kotler on Marketing, Marketing Insights from A to Z, Marketing 4.0, Marketing Places, Marketing of Nations, Chaotics, Market Your Way to Growth, Winning Global Markets, Strategic Marketing for Health Care Organizations, Social Marketing, Social Media Marketing, My Adventures in Marketing, Up and Out of Poverty, and Winning at Innovation. Kotler describes strategic marketing as serving as "the link between society's needs and its pattern of industrial response." Kotler helped create the field of social marketing that focuses on helping individuals and groups modify their behaviors toward healthier and safer living styles. He also created the concept of "demarketing" to aid in the task of reducing the level of demand. He developed the concepts of "prosumers," "atmospherics," and "societal marketing." He is regarded as "The Father of Modern Marketing" by many scholars.Kotler's latest work focuses on economic justice and the shortcomings of capitalism. He published Confronting Capitalism: Real Solutions for a Troubled Economic System in 2015, Democracy in Decline: Rebuilding its Future in 2016, "Advancing the Common Good" in 2019, and Brand Activism: From Purpose to Action in 2018.

Pantheon has 267 people classified as businesspeople born between 1738 and 1990. Of these 267, 139 (52.06%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living businesspeople include Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Jeff Bezos. The most famous deceased businesspeople include Howard Hughes, John D. Rockefeller, and David Rockefeller. As of April 2022, 37 new businesspeople have been added to Pantheon including Stan Kroenke, Jesse Livermore, and Maxwell Perkins.

Living Businesspeople

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Deceased Businesspeople

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Newly Added Businesspeople (2022)

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Which Businesspeople were alive at the same time? This visualization shows the lifespans of the 25 most globally memorable Businesspeople since 1700.