John F. (John Fairfield) Dryden

Born in Temple, Maine, in 1839, John Fairfield Dryden became one of the most influential insurance executives of his era. After studying at Yale without graduating, he moved into business and, in the 1870s, helped launch the Newark company that grew into the Prudential Insurance Company of America.

Dryden is especially remembered for backing industrial life insurance in the United States, a form of low-cost coverage aimed at ordinary wage earners and their families. That made his work important not just in business history, but in the wider story of how financial services reached people who had often been left out.

His public life expanded as well: he served as a Republican U.S. senator from New Jersey from 1902 to 1907. He died in Newark in 1911, leaving behind a legacy tied both to American business and to the growth of modern insurance.