Shelby Cullom Davis

New York investment banker, philanthropist and former United States Ambassador to Switzerland. Mr. Davis was born in Peoria, Ill. He graduated from Princeton in 1930 and earned a master's degree at Columbia University in 1931 and a doctorate in political science at the University of Geneva in 1934. He worked as a European correspondent for the Columbia Broadcasting System in Geneva and as an economist before joining the staff of Thomas E. Dewey. He advised on economics when Mr. Dewey ran for president as the Republican candidate in 1940 and again in 1944. With Mr. Dewey as Governor of New York, he served as First Deputy Superintendent of Insurance from 1944 to 1947. He was the head of Shelby Cullom Davis & Company, a firm specializing in insurance securities that he founded in 1947 with $100,000. He served as the American envoy in Bern under Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford from 1969 to 1975. He was a past chairman of the Heritage Foundation, a former governor of the Society of Mayflower Descendants and president of the Sons of the Revolution. In 1964 he presented a check for $5.3 million to Princeton University, his alma mater, to support its history department. He endowed Princeton's Center for Historic Studies, several chairs of history there, chairs at Wellesley College, and professorships of free enterprise at Wellesley and at the Cullom-Davis Library at Bradley University.