John D. Rockefeller 3rd

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John Davison Rockefeller 3rd (March 21, 1906 – July 10, 1978) was a major philanthropist and third-generation member of the prominent Rockefeller family. He was the eldest son of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, and his siblings were Abby, Nelson, Laurance, Winthrop, and David.

He received his preparatory education at the Browning School in New York City and the Loomis Institute, Windsor, Connecticut, in 1925. He went to Princeton University where he received high honors in economics and graduated in 1929 with the degree of Bachelor of Science, choosing industrial relations as the subject of his senior thesis.

Commencing a lifelong commitment to international relations, he undertook a world tour after graduating from college, which concluded with work for the Institute of Pacific Relations conference in Japan.

He was a major third-generation Rockefeller philanthropist and founder of the Asia Society (established in 1956), the Population Council (1952), and a reconstituted Japan Society. He also served on the General Education Board, the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (now Rockefeller University), Colonial Williamsburg, and the China Medical Board, set up by his grandfather.

He was also president of the family's principal philanthropy run by family members, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, from its inception in 1940 to 1956, and chairman of the Rockefeller Foundation for twenty years.

He established the Rockefeller Public Service Awards in 1958. Among his many other achievements, he was the driving force behind the construction of the landmark Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, built between 1959 and 1966 in New York City.

He died in an automobile accident in Mount Pleasant, New York, near the family estate of "Pocantico", on July 10, 1978. The Rockefeller College at Princeton University was named in his honor in 1982.

On November 11, 1932 he married Blanchette Ferry Hooker. They had one son, Jay Rockefeller (John D. Rockefeller IV)—currently a U.S. Senator from West Virginia and a former two-term governor of that state—and three daughters, Sandra, Hope, and Alida Rockefeller.

[edit] Further reading

Harr, John Ensor, and Peter J. Johnson. The Rockefeller Century: Three Generations of America's Greatest Family. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1988. ISBN 0684189364.
Harr, John Ensor, and Peter J. Johnson. The Rockefeller Conscience: An American Family in Public and in Private. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1991. ISBN 0684193647.
Rockefeller, David. Memoirs. New York: Random House, 2002. ISBN 0679405887.
Young, Edgar B. Lincoln Center: The Building of an Institution. New York: New York University Press, 1980.