Wilhelm Ralph Merton (14 May 1848, in Frankfurt – 15 December 1916, in Berlin) was a prominent and influential German entrepreneur, social democrat, and philanthropist. Among his most notable accomplishments, he was a founder of the University of Frankfurt and Metallgesellschaft AG, which became the largest non-ferrous mining company in the world and the second largest company in Germany. Early life and education Wilhelm was born to a Jewish family, the eighth of nine children of (until 1856: Raphael Lyon Moses) and his wife Sara Amelie Cohen (daughter of ), who immigrated to Frankfurt from England in 1837. On 5 November 1855, Ralph Moses and his family gained citizenship of the free city of Frankfurt. On 27 November, he was granted permission to call himself ‘Merton’ after claiming in his application for such (on 22 October 1856) that his brother Benjamin had already taken the family name ‘Merton’ in Manchester as the name ‘Moses’ was not suitable to be used as a surname. Wilhelm Merton studied at Frankfurt’s grammar school, thereafter in Munich and he performed voluntary work at the Deutsche Bank in Berlin. He married Emma Ladenburg in 1877 (born 1859 in Frankfurt, died in 1939), who was a daughter of Eugenie Halphen (1829–1866) and the businessman Emil Ladenburg (1822–1902), co-owner of the famous Ladenburg banking house. The couple had five children: Adolf, Alfred, Walter Henry, Gerda, and Richard. Merton and his children converted to Protestantism in 1899. The Mertons—who had been English citizens hitherto—naturalised as Germans in the same year, and thereafter he bore the name Wilhelm Merton. Metallgesellschaft AG Merton's father had married the daughter of Philip Abraham Cohen who operated a metal firm which he became executive of upon his father-in-law's death. In 1881, Wilhelm Ralph Merton succeeded his father and soon took full control of the firm by bringing in outside investors, Leo Ellinger and cousin Zachary Hochschild, to get full ownership and incorporated it as a joint stock company named Metallgesellschaft AG. The Metallgesellschaft, with 40 employees and one telephone—the first telephones were installed in Frankfurt in 1881—at the outset traded in copper, lead, and zinc, later diversifying into nickel and aluminum. Over the next hundred years, it grew into a company of over 20,000 employees with $10 billion revenue. It had over 250 subsidiaries specializing in mining, specialty chemicals (Chemetall), commodity trading, financial services, and engineering. Initially in 1881, close business as well