GUGGENHEIM, MEYER AND DANIEL

(respectively b. Feb. 1, 1828, Langnau, Switz.d. March 15, 1905, Palm Beach, Fla., U.S.; b. July 9, 1856, Philadelphia, Pa., U.S.d. Sept. 28, 1930, Port Washington, N.Y.), American industrialists, father and son, who developed worldwide mining interests that, when merged with the American Smelting and Refining Company in 1901, dominated the industry for the next three decades and laid the foundation for the present U.S. mining industry. After emigrating to the United States from Switzerland in 1847, Meyer Guggenheim built an import firm in Philadelphia, which specialized in Swiss embroideries. In the early 1880s he acquired interests in two Colorado copper mines. Realizing their potential value, he eventually invested his entire fortune in the mines; his seven sons, especially Daniel, supervised the acquisition and operation of smelters. In 1891 the Guggenheims formed a trust, consolidating about a dozen of their refining operations under the name Colorado Smelting and Refining Company. In 1901 they assumed leadership of the U.S. mining industry by gaining control of the American Smelting and Refining Company, a trust composed of the country's largest metal-processing plants. Directing the trust until 1919 and exercising a dominant influence on it in the 1920s, Daniel Guggenheim expanded the family interests to include mines producing tin in Bolivia, gold in Alaska, copper in Utah, and diamonds in Africa, as well as nitrate fields in Chile and rubber plantations in what is now Congo (Kinshasa). His most notable philanthropies were the Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Foundation and the Daniel Guggenheim Foundation for the Promotion of Aeronautics. In 1925 the sixth son of Meyer Guggenheim, Simon Guggenheim (18671941), established in memory of his son the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to award fellowships to aid artists and scholars studying abroad. Solomon Guggenheim (18611949), the fourth son of Meyer Guggenheim, founded in 1937 the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation for the advancement of art, which now operates the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Guggenheim Museum SoHo in New York City and directs the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Bilbao, Spain.