Edwin G. Booz

Edwin G. Booz founded the management consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton.

Born in 1887, in Reading, Pennsylvania, to a family of modest means and one of seven sons, Booz worked his way through prep school, college, and graduate school at many and varied kinds of work--tutor, bookkeeper, draftsman, and 'business investigator.' When Booz left the Kellogg School at Northwestern University in 1914 with a bachelor's degree in economics and a master's degree in psychology, he went into business for himself to perform studies and analyses of businesses.

He conducted studies and business investigations for clients as varied as the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company of Akron, Ohio; the Canadian Pacific Railroad; Chicago's Union Stock Yards and Transit Company; and the Photographers Association of the United States.

World War I caused a temporary hiatus in his career as an entrepreneur, but not in his work as an analyst and solver of business problems. Drafted into the Army as a private to do personnel work in September 1917, he soon rose to the rank of major and worked with the War Department in Washington, D.C., to reorganize and perfect the business methods of its various bureaus. He left the Army in March 1919, ready to turn his business acumen to the service of bankers, manufacturers, advertising agencies, wholesalers, sales managers, publishers, real estate operators, public service cooperations, and other enterprises. Booz focused on identifying, diagnosing, and recommending solutions to business problems. His client base grew; he expanded his services to include executive recruitment; and he broadened the partnership base of the company so that in 1936, it became Booz, Fry, Allen, & Hamilton, and subsequently, Booz Allen Hamilton.

Between the two World Wars, Booz continued to pursue his vision of dedicated service to businesses. In 1940, he responded to a request from the Secretary of the Navy to help the Navy prepare for war, thus beginning what turned out to be Booz Allen's long-term and continuing service to the federal government.

Booz retired partially from the firm in 1946 and died in October 1951. At that time, the company newsletter published a tribute paid to Ed Booz by one of the staff at an annual conference in 1947:

"I admire his deep sincerity, his high ideals, his uniformity of analysis, his ability to give and to take, his courage, his capacity for absorbing new tools, his burning desire to build soundly, his deep rooted conviction regarding the value of organization, his philosophical grasp of the implication of growth and perpetuation."