Carnegie, Andrew (1835–1919)

Scottish-born US industrialist and philanthropist, who used his personal fortune from the creation of his Pittsburgh iron and steel industries to fund educational, cultural, and peace institutions, many of which bear his name. After his death, the Carnegie trusts continued his philanthropic activities. Carnegie Hall in New York, which opened in 1891 as the Music Hall, was renamed to honour his large donations in 1898.

Carnegie invested successfully in railways, land, and oil. From 1873 he engaged in steelmaking, adopting new techniques. Having built up a vast empire, he disposed of it to the US Steel Corporation in 1901.

Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland, but his family, who were Chartists, emigrated to the USA in 1848, settling in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. At the age of 13 he started work as a bobbin boy in a cotton mill but soon moved on to become a telegrapher with the Pennsylvania Railroad. He was promoted to superintendent of the Pittsburgh division where his investments in the first company to make sleeping cars and in oil lands became the basis of his fortune. During the American Civil War he worked on military transport in the War Department. In 1865 he founded the Keystone Bridge Company to manufacture iron railway bridges and then a steel mill. He was one of the first to use the Bessemer process to make steel alloys from iron. By 1873 he had launched the Carnegie Company, which was to become the largest iron and steel works in the USA. In 1901, at the age of 65, he sold out to J P Morgan for an estimated $400 million in a merger with the US Steel Corporation, and then retired to Skibo Castle in Sutherland, Scotland.

In 1889, he wrote The Gospel of Wealth, which stated his belief that the rich should distribute their wealth for the benefit of society (although Carnegie was attacked by some as an exploiter of labour and an unscrupulous business competitor). From the 1880s to the end of his life he gave more than $350 million to good causes. Although he had no formal education, self-teaching and books were a lifelong interest, and he made donations to around 2,500 libraries in the USA and other English-speaking countries, gave large gifts to US and Scottish universities, and funded improvements in his hometown of Dunfermline. He also endowed charitable foundations, the largest of which, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, provides $15 million annually for the advancement of knowledge. Other bodies have included the Carnegie Institute in Washington, the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, the Carnegie UK Trust, the Peace Palace at the Hague (now the International Court of Justice) and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The Carnegie Medal, an annual award for a children's book, was created in his honour in 1936 by the UK Library Association.