Сэмюэл Бронфман: Канадский предприниматель и филантроп

Canadian businessman (1891–1971)

Samuel Bronfman, (February 27, 1889 – July 10, 1971) was a Canadian businessman, philanthropist, and member of the Canadian Bronfman family. He founded Distillers Corporation Limited and purchased the Seagram Company,

Bronfman's Distillers Corporation acquired Joseph E. Seagram & Sons of Waterloo, Ontario, from the heirs of Joseph Seagram in 1928. Because of changes to US tax law in the Lyndon Johnson administration, it became advantageous for Bronfman to purchase an oil company, which he did with the purchase of Texas Pacific Coal and Oil Company in 1963 for $50 million. In 1980, the Bronfman heirs sold the Texas Pacific Oil holdings to Sun Oil Co. for $2.3 billion. The Seagram assets have since been acquired by other companies, notably The Coca Cola Company, Diageo, and Pernod Ricard.

In 1952, he established The Samuel and Saidye Bronfman Family Foundation, one of Canada's major private granting foundations. Bronfman was President of the Canadian Jewish Congress from 1939 to 1962, and he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1967. In 1971, he helped to establish the Bronfman Building at McGill University, which houses the Desautels Faculty of Management. The building was named in his honour as appreciation for his donation to the university. The Bronfman family has continued its support of the university; in 1993 they created the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, and in 2002 donated the Seagram Building on Sherbrooke St. to McGill. The Bronfman Archaeology Wing of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, Israel, is named for Bronfman and his wife. The Samuel Bronfman Chair in Management was also established at McGill University in January 1942. From 1961 to 1970, the Samuel Bronfman Foundation funded the American Public Health Association's Bronfman Prize for Public Health Achievement and Annual Bronfman Lecture to support public health practitioners that were neglected by existing awards focused on biomedical discoveries. The first awardees were World Health Organization Director General Marcolino Gomes Candau, National Tuberculosis Association Director James E. Perkins, and National Heart Institute Director James Watt. The first Bronfman lecture was delivered by John C. Bugher, director of the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras' Nuclear Center, on his work supporting the US Atomic Energy Commission's biomedical research.

Mordecai Richler's 1989 novel Solomon Gursky Was Here is largely based on the life of Samuel Bronfman.