AKA Edwin George Booz

Born: 2-Sep-1887
Birthplace: Reading, PA
Died: 1-Oct-1951
Location of death: Evanston, IL
Cause of death: Stroke
Remains: Buried, Memorial Park Cemetery, Skokie, IL

Gender: Male
Religion: Christian [1]
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Business

Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Founder of Booz Allen Hamilton

Military service: US Army, to Major (1917-19)

Edwin G. Booz was trained in economics and psychology, and founded a small business in 1914, offering "efficiency expertise" (now called management consulting). His was not the first consulting firm, but the idea -- that major questions about a company's products or policies could be better and more impartially considered by outsiders than by a company's own management or employees -- was still considered an unproven theory. His early clients included Canadian Pacific Railway and Goodyear.

The business was renamed Booz Business Research and Development Company in 1916; Booz Business Engineering Service in 1919; Edwin G. Booz Business Surveys in 1924; and Booz, Fry, Allen & Hamilton in 1936 with the addition of partners George Fry, James L. Allen, and Carl Hamilton. In 1942, Fry grew uncomfortable with the firm's increasing focus on government contracts and resigned, and the company was renamed Booz Allen Hamilton, which remains its legal name today, though Hamilton's name is usually omitted in conversation and media reports.

According to company folklore, Booz once concluded a report to the chairman of Montgomery Ward by telling him that the only major problem with the firm was its chairman. Perhaps as a result of such bluntness, Booz gradually withdrew from the firm's work in the 1940s and instead focused his attention on writing aphorisms about life and work, which were circulated inside the firm's offices and became known as "Boozisms". Hamilton died in 1946, Allen retired in 1970 and died in 1992, and Booz retired in 1947 and died of a stroke in 1951. The company's clients over the decades have included a virtual who's who of major corporations and government agencies, from General Motors to the National Football League to the US government's Internal Revenue Service.

    University: BA Economics, Northwestern University (1912)
    University: MS Phychology, Northwestern University (1914)

    Booz Allen Hamilton Founder and President (1914-51)
    Stroke 1-Oct-1951 (fatal)
    Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry
    German Ancestry

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