J. Paul Getty was an American petroleum industrialist who founded the Getty Oil Company in 1942 and became the longtime patriarch of the Getty family. He was the son of pioneer oilman George Getty, and built on his father's start in the business to become one of the world's wealthiest private citizens, named the wealthiest living American by Fortune magazine in 1957 and later declared by the Guinness Book of Records to be the world's wealthiest private citizen, with a fortune estimated at 1.2 billion dollars in 1966. Getty was also a major collector of art and antiquities, and his collection formed the basis of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, which received more than 661 million dollars from his estate after his death.
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Built Getty Oil into one of the largest independent oil companies in the world.
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