Pierre Samuel du Pont (; January 15, 1870 – April 4, 1954) was an American entrepreneur, businessman, philanthropist and member of the prominent du Pont family. He was president of DuPont from 1915 to 1919, and served on its board of directors until 1940. He also managed General Motors from 1915 to 1920, became GM's president in 1920, and served on GM's board of directors until 1928. Among other notable accomplishments, he was among the founding board of directors of the Empire State Building which opened in 1931. Early life Du Pont was born January 15, 1870, on the family estate near Wilmington, Delaware, and was named after his great-great-grandfather, Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours. He was the eldest of three sons born to Lammot du Pont and Mary Belin. His great-great-grandfather, and namesake, was a French economist (who had been granted the ennobling suffix "de Nemours" after election to the Constituent Assembly) and patriarch of the du Pont family. Du Pont de Nemours immigrated to America with relatives including his son, Eleuthère Irénée du Pont, who founded the DuPont company in 1802, and whose descendants would form one of the richest American business dynasties of the ensuing two centuries. In 1884 his father was killed in an industrial accident. As the eldest son of ten children he served as patriarch of the family. For the rest of their lives, his siblings, even his older sisters, addressed him as "Dad" or "Daddy." He attended MIT and graduated with a degree in chemistry in 1890. Career Following graduation from MIT in 1890, he became assistant superintendent at Eleutherian Mills on the Brandywine River. He and his cousin Francis Gurney du Pont developed the first American smokeless powder in 1892 at the Carney's Point plant in New Jersey. Most of the 1890s he spent working with the management at a steel firm partly owned by DuPont (primarily by T. Coleman du Pont), the Johnson Street Rail Company in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Here he learned to deal with money from the company's president, Arthur Moxham. In 1899, unsatisfied with how conservative DuPont's management was, he quit and took over the Johnson Company. In 1901, while du Pont was supervising the liquidation of Johnson Company assets in Lorain, Ohio, he employed John J. Raskob as a private secretary, beginning a long and profitable business and personal relationship between the two. Expansion of DuPont He