biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1898–1990)
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| biography:
| Industrialist, art collector, and philanthropist, born in New York City, New York, USA. His father, Julius Hammer, was a Russian immigrant who was a doctor, a socialist activist, and a founding member of the American Communist Party. While earning his medical degree at Columbia University, Armand made his first million dollars running his father's pharmaceutical business. In 1921 he went to the new Soviet Union to help combat a typhus epidemic; realizing that starvation was also a problem, he hit upon the idea of trading American grain for Soviet furs and other goods. By this time he had gained the support of Lenin, who gave Hammer certain commercial concessions, and he made even more millions in manufacturing and trade. Back in the USA by 1930, his many business ventures in the 1930s and 1940s included trading in whiskey, cattle, and priceless art works acquired in Russia. In 1956 he bought the near-bankrupt Occidental Petroleum, and during his 33 years as chairman and chief executive officer he turned it into a billion-dollar conglomerate through a series of oil strikes and rights deals and the acquisition of fertilizer, chemical, and coal companies. He championed US–Soviet relations throughout the cold war, promoting cultural and commercial exchanges and representing the USA in trade talks. As one of the few Americans trusted by the Soviet leaders, he became an unofficial ambassador and liaison during difficult moments. (In 1986 he personally paid for a team of physicians to quickly reach Russia in the wake of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.) Immensely rich, he supported many philanthropies through the Armand Hammer Foundation and made major donations to Columbia University, the National Gallery, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His own extensive art collection was left to the Armand Hammer Museum that he established in Los Angeles in 1990. |
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