Henry Solomon Wellcome: three-quarter length. Oil painting by Hugh Goldwin Riviere, 1906.

Henry S. Wellcome was born to a poor family of farmers in Almond, Wisconsin, in 1853. On his death in 1936 he brought into being a British charity, the Wellcome Trust, which many years later became the most highly endowed charity on the world. He owed this achievement to his success as a pharmaceutical manufacturer and salesman. He trained as a pharmacist at Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, and in 1880 went to England to join his college-friend S. Mainville Burroughs in a new pharmaceutical company called Burroughs, Wellcome & Co. After Burroughs died in 1895, Wellcome became sole proprietor of the company, and used his wealth to fund many charitable projects, including libraries, laboratories and museums. His own historical collection forms the nucleus of the present Wellcome Collection in London, and the Wellcome Building in London's Euston Road was built by him in 1932 to house it. At his death he bequeathed ownership of the pharmaceutical company to the Wellcome Trust, which owned it until 1986, after which the Trust gradually sold the company in order to diversify and stabilise its assets. Henry S. Wellcome's will formed the founding document of the Wellcome Trust, and the Trust's achievements in advancing knowledge for the public benefit therefore depends to a large extent on Wellcome's fortune and philanthropy