Thomas John Watson Jr. (January 14, 1914 – December 31, 1993) was an American businessman, political figure, Army Air Forces pilot, and philanthropist. The son of IBM Corporation founder Thomas J. Watson, he was the second IBM president (1952–71), the 11th national president of the Boy Scouts of America (1964–68), and the 16th United States Ambassador to the Soviet Union (1979–81). He received many honors during his lifetime, including being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. Fortune called him "the greatest capitalist in history" and Time listed him as one of "100 most influential people of the 20th century". Early life Thomas Watson Jr. was born on January 14, 1914, just before his father, Thomas J. Watson, was dismissed from his job at cash register company NCR – an act which subsequently drove Watson Sr., to the foundation of the largest and most profitable digital computer manufacturer in the world, IBM Corporation. Two sisters followed Thomas Jr., Jane and Helen, before a final child, Arthur Kittredge Watson, was born. Watson Jr. was raised in the Short Hills section of Millburn, New Jersey. Both sons were immersed in IBM from a very early age. He was taken on plant inspections – his first memory of such a visit (to the Dayton, Ohio factory) was at the age of five – and business tours to Europe and made appearances at annual gatherings for the company's elite sales representatives, the IBM Hundred Per Cent Club, even before he was old enough to attend school. At home his father's discipline was erratic and often harsh. Around the time he was thirteen, Watson suffered from clinical depression. Talking to a reporter in 1974, Watson described his relationship with his father; "My father and I had terrible fights ... He seemed like a blanket that covered everything. I really wanted to beat him but also make him proud of me." But this relationship was not all negative: "I really enjoyed the ten years (working) with him". In his book he says; "I was so intimately entwined with my father. I had a compelling desire, maybe out of honor for the old gentleman, maybe out of sheer cussedness, to prove to the world that I could excel in the same way that he did." Watson attended the Hun School of Princeton in Princeton, New Jersey. He claimed in his autobiography that