author
E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company
A French-born chemist and industrialist, he turned a sharp eye for science into the gunpowder business that grew into DuPont. His life connects the upheaval of the French Revolution with the rise of American industry.
1 Audiobook
Farming with Dynamite: A Few Hints to Farmers
by E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company
About the author
Born in Paris in 1771, Éleuthère Irénée du Pont de Nemours trained in chemistry and powder making in France, where he learned under leading scientific figures of the era. After the du Pont family fled the turmoil of the French Revolution and settled in the United States in 1799, he spotted a practical opportunity: American gunpowder was expensive and often poor in quality.
In 1802, he founded E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company along the Brandywine Creek in Delaware. What began as a black-powder mill became one of the country’s most important early industrial businesses, supplying a growing nation and laying the foundation for a company that would last for generations.
He died in 1834, but his influence endured through both the company he built and the prominent du Pont family that followed. His story is part immigrant enterprise, part scientific ambition, and part origin tale for one of America’s best-known industrial names.