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Jean Paul Getty (December 15, 1892 – June 6, 1976) was an American industrialist.〔Whitman, Alden. (J. Paul Getty dead at 83; amassed billions from oil. ) ''New York Times'', June 6, 1976. Retrieved September 6, 2008.〕 He founded the Getty Oil Company, and in 1957 ''Fortune'' magazine named him the richest living American,〔List of 76 said to hold above 75 millions. ''New York Times'', October 28, 1957.〕 while the 1966 Guinness Book of Records named him as the world's richest private citizen, worth an estimated $1.2 billion (approximately $ billion in ).〔Norris & Ross McWhirter, Guinness Book of Records, London, 1966, p.229〕 At his death, he was worth more than $2 billion (approximately $ billion in ).〔Lenzner, Robert. ''The great Getty: the life and loves of J. Paul Getty, richest man in the world''. New York: Crown Publishers, 1985. ISBN 0-517-56222-7〕 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. Despite his wealth, Getty was known for being a notorious miser. He famously negotiated his grandson's ransom. 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 (approximately $ billion in ) of his estate was left to the museum after his death.〔 He established the J. Paul Getty Trust in 1953. The trust is the world's wealthiest art institution, and operates the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Foundation, the Getty Research Institute, and the Getty Conservation Institute.〔Edward Wyatt, "Getty Fees and Budget Reassessed," ''The New York TImes'', April 30, 2009, p. C1.〕 ==Biography== Getty was born to Sarah Catherine McPherson Risher and George Getty, who was 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. In 1913, he obtained a diploma in Economics and Political Science from the University of Oxford, having matriculated as a non-collegiate student on November 28, 1912. He spent his summers between studies working on his father's oil fields in Oklahoma. Running his own oil company in Tulsa, he made his first million by June 1916. The Nancy Taylor No. 1 Oil Well Site near Haskell, Oklahoma, was crucial to his early financial success. This oil well was the first to be drilled by J. P. Getty. In 1917, he announced that he was retiring to become a Los Angeles-based playboy, and took a few years off from the money-making grind to enjoy spending his earnings on women. In 1919, Getty returned to business in Oklahoma. During the 1920s, he added about $3 million to his already sizable estate. His succession of marriages and divorces (three during the 1920s, five throughout his life) so distressed his father, however, that J. Paul inherited a mere $500,000 of the $10 million fortune his father George had left at the time of his death. Just before he died in 1930, George Franklin Getty said that Jean Paul would ultimately destroy the family company. 〔citation needed〕 Shrewdly investing his resources during the Great Depression, Getty acquired Pacific Western Oil Corporation, and he began the acquisition (completed in 1953) of the Mission Corporation, which included Tidewater Oil and Skelly Oil. In 1967 the billionaire merged these holdings into Getty Oil. Beginning in 1949, Getty paid Ibn Saud $9.5 million in cash and $1 million a year for a 60-year concession to a tract of barren land near the border of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. No oil had ever been discovered there, and none appeared until four years and $30 million had been spent. From 1953 onward, Getty's gamble produced a year, which contributed greatly to the fortune responsible for making him one of the richest people in the world. Getty increased the family wealth, learning to speak Arabic, which enabled his unparalleled expansion into the Middle East. Getty owned the controlling interest in nearly 200 businesses, including Getty Oil. Associates identified his overall wealth at between $2 billion and $4 billion. It didn't come easily, perhaps inspiring Getty's widely quoted remark—"The meek shall inherit the earth, but not the mineral rights."〔("Thoughts On The Business Of Life" ) at ''Forbes''〕 J. Paul Getty was an owner of Getty Oil, Getty Inc., George F. Getty Inc., Pacific Western Oil Corporation, Mission Corporation, Mission Development Company, Tidewater Oil, Skelly Oil, Mexican Seaboard Oil, Petroleum Corporation of America, Spartan Aircraft Company, Spartan Cafeteria Company, Minnehoma Insurance Company, Minnehoma Financial Company, Pierre Hotel at Fifth Avenue and 60th Street, Pierre Marques Hotel at Revolcadero Beach near Acapulco, Mexico, Sutton Place, 72-room mansion near Guildford, Surrey, 35 miles from London, a 15th-century palace and nearby castle at Ladispoli, on the coast northwest of Rome, a Malibu ranch home. He moved to Britain in the 1950s and became a prominent Anglophile. He lived and worked at his 16th-century Tudor estate, Sutton Place near Guildford, Surrey; the traditional country house became the centre of Getty Oil and his associated companies and he used the estate to entertain his British and Arabian friends (including the British Rothschild family and numerous rulers of Middle Eastern countries). Getty lived the rest of his life in the British Isles, dying of heart failure at the age of 83 on June 6, 1976. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「J. Paul Getty」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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