du Pont, Alfred Irénée (1864-1935)

US industrialist. He was part of a family firm involved in improving the manufacture of gunpowder. Later business interests included a company that exported US goods to Europe, ownership of the Wilmington Morning News, Delaware and Florida banks, and real estate.

He was born near Wilmington, Delaware. He left the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to work at the family explosives firm. After studying a new European gunpowder for the US Ordnance Department, he won the contract for its US manufacture. With two cousins, he bought E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company and as general and operating manager he designed new machinery, and, among other advances, developed gunpowder for US large-calibre guns. He was forced out of the company after a family stock dispute in 1915 and the family feud continued in later years as he sought to thwart his relatives' political careers. After World War I he founded the export business of Nemours Trading Corporation which lost millions of dollars during the depression of the 1930s. Late in life he was a prominent advocate of social security.