Horace Rowan Gaither Jr. (1909 – April 7, 1961), was a

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

attorney, investment banker, and a powerful administrator at the

Ford Foundation The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the stated goal of advancing human welfare. Created in 1936 by Edsel Ford and his father Henry Ford, it was originally funded by a US$25,000 gift from Edsel Ford. By 1947, after the death ...

. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, he served as

assistant director The role of an assistant director on a film includes tracking daily progress against the filming production schedule, arranging logistics, preparing daily call sheets, checking cast and crew, and maintaining order on the set. They also have to tak ...

of the

Radiation Laboratory The Radiation Laboratory, commonly called the Rad Lab, was a microwave and radar research laboratory located at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was first created in October 1940 and operated until 31 ...

M.I.T. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

In 1948, he helped found the

Rand Corporation The RAND Corporation (from the phrase "research and development") is an American nonprofit global policy think tank created in 1948 by Douglas Aircraft Company to offer research and analysis to the United States Armed Forces. It is financed ...

and served as a trustee until 1959. In 1958 and 1959, he served as the 1st Chairman of the MITRE Corporation Board of Trustees. From 1959 through his death, Gaither was a general partner and co-founder of Draper, Gaither & Anderson, one of the first

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...

firms on the west coast of the U.S., together with William H. Draper Jr., a retired Army general and Frederick L. Anderson, a retired Air Force general. He was hired by

Henry Ford II Henry Ford II (September 4, 1917 – September 29, 1987), sometimes known as "Hank the Deuce", was an American businessman in the automotive industry. He was the oldest son of Edsel Ford I and oldest grandson of Henry Ford I. He was president ...

to help set the priorities of the

in 1947, chairing the study committee that wrote the "Report of the Study for the Ford Foundation on Policy and Program." He was later president of the Ford Foundation. He is best remembered today as the author of the controversial 1957

Gaither Report ''Deterrence & Survival in the Nuclear Age'', commonly referred to as the Gaither report, is a report submitted in November 1957 to the United States National Security Council and the U.S. president concerning strategy to prepare against the perce ...

on the vulnerability of American defense. He died in 1961 of lung cancer.

References

1909 births 1961 deaths American venture capitalists Lawyers from San Francisco Law in the San Francisco Bay Area 20th-century American lawyers 20th-century American businesspeople {{US-business-bio-1900s-stub