George W. Merck

George Wilhelm Herman Emanuel Merck (born March 29, 1894 in New York City , † November 9, 1957 in West Orange , New Jersey ) was an American entrepreneur and CEO of Merck Sharp & Dohme (MSD).

Life

George W. Merck was one of five children and the only son of George Merck and his wife Frederike, née Schenk (1856–1943).

After completing his BA in 1915 at Harvard College in Cambridge (Massachusetts) , George W. actually planned to study chemistry in Germany, but the First World War prevented this. Instead, he started at MSD, the company that his father ran and was then a subsidiary of the German company E. Merck . In 1919, MSD became an independent company through expropriation from E. Merck. A year before his father's death, he handed the company over to his son. From 1925 to 1950, George W. Merck was CEO of MSD. During the Second World War he headed the United States biological weapons program in the USA, for which he received the Presidential Medal for Merit in 1946 . George W. Merck's statement is well known: “Medicine is for the patient. Medicine is for the people. It is not for the profits. "

George W. Merck was an imposing personality with a height of 1.96 m (= 6 feet and 5 inches) and 113 kg (= 250 pounds). He was a staunch Republican and chairman of the New Jersey party. From his first marriage (1917 with Josephine Carey Wall) he had two sons (George and Albert) and from his second marriage (Serena Stevens) two daughters (Serena and Judith) and a son (John).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Medicine: What the Doctor Ordered. In: Time Magazine, August 18, 1952
2. ^ JJ Li Triumph of the heart: the story of statins. Oxford University Press, 2009, ISBN 0-195-32357-2 , p. 48. Limited preview in Google Book Search