David Rockefeller (1915-2017) was the youngest of the six children of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller. He attended the Lincoln School of Columbia University's Teachers College in New York for 12 years and graduated from Harvard University in 1936 with a bachelor of science degree. After post‐graduate study at Harvard and the London School of Economics, he received a Ph.D. degree in economics from the University of Chicago in 1940. His doctoral thesis, "Unused Resources and Economic Waste," was published by the University of Chicago Press in 1940.

On September 7, 1940, David Rockefeller married Margaret (Peggy) McGrath. They had been married for nearly 56 years when she died in 1996. Together they raised two sons and four daughters.

From 1940 to 1941, David Rockefeller served as secretary to New York Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia. He was then assistant regional director of the U.S. Office of Defense, Health, and Welfare Service before enlisting as a private in the U.S. Army in May 1942. He entered Officer Candidate School in 1943 and was discharged as a captain in 1945. During World War II, he served in North Africa and France, where for seven months he was an assistant military attache in Paris. He was awarded the U.S. Legion of Merit, the U.S. Army Commendation Ribbon, and the French Legion of Honor.

Business Career: After the war, David Rockefeller began a career in banking. He joined the Chase National Bank as an assistant manager in the foreign department in 1946. He was appointed an assistant cashier in 1947, second vice president in 1948, and vice president in 1949. From 1950 to 1952, he was responsible for the supervision of Chase's business in Latin America, where--under his direction--new branches were opened in Cuba, Panama, and Puerto Rico, plus a representative office in Buenos Aires. In 1952, he was named a senior vice president with responsibility for supervising the economic research department and customer relations in the metropolitan New York area, including all the New York City branches.

When Chase National and the Bank of the Manhattan Company merged on March 31, 1955, David Rockefeller was appointed an executive vice president in charge of the bank development department. On January 1, 1957, he became vice chair of the board of directors, with responsibility for the administrative and planning functions of the bank as a whole. He became president of the bank and chair of the executive committee of the board of directors on January 1, 1961.

On March 1, 1969, David Rockefeller became chair of the board of directors and chief executive officer of The Chase Manhattan Bank, N.A. in New York and of The Chase Manhattan Corporation upon its formation on June 4, 1969. He retired in 1981. During his career with Chase Manhattan, Rockefeller gained a worldwide reputation as a leading banker and spokesman for the business community. He spearheaded the bank's expansion both internationally and throughout the metropolitan New York area and helped the bank play a significant role as a corporate citizen.

Philanthropy and Public Service: In addition to his work with Chase Manhattan Bank, David Rockefeller was a leader in many public and private projects, reflecting his wide range of interests in international, governmental, civic, and cultural affairs and his belief in collaboration between government and the private sector.

In 1940, David Rockefeller became a member of the board of trustees of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, which had been established in 1901 by his grandfather John D. Rockefeller, Sr. A decade later he succeeded his father as chair of the Institute's board of trustees, serving in that capacity for 25 years, from 1950 to 1975. Working with Detlev Bronk, who had become president of the Institute in the early 1950s, Rockefeller led the transformation of the research institute into a biomedical graduate university, which was renamed the Rockefeller University in 1965.

Along with his brothers--John D. 3rd, Nelson, Laurance, and Winthrop--David Rockefeller established the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) in 1940. He also helped found the Rockefeller Family Fund in 1967 and joined with his brothers in a number of other philanthropic and investment enterprises, including economic development projects.

David Rockefeller also served the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), which his mother had helped create. Following Abby Rockefeller's death in 1948, David Rockefeller was invited to take her seat on the board of directors. He served a brief stint as interim chair of the board in 1958 and longer periods in that capacity between 1962 to 1972 and 1987 to 1993. He also was a life trustee of the University of Chicago (which his grandfather helped establish) and an honorary trustee of International House (New York), established by his father.

In 1958, Rockefeller helped establish the Downtown–Lower Manhattan Association (DLMA), serving as its chair from 1958 to 1975. Its planning proposals aided the redevelopment of lower Manhattan and led to the creation of the World Trade Center. He also played a major role in the development of the Morningside Heights neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan as president (1947‐1957) and then chair (1957‐1965) of Morningside Heights, Inc. As chair of the New York City Partnership (1979‐1988), he was a leader in organizing the city's business sector to work with government on such major public issues as economic growth, summer jobs for students, improving the city's schools, and housing development.

He was also instrumental in the formation of the International Executive Service Corps (chair, 1964‐1968), a group of business executives who volunteered to provide technical and managerial assistance to private enterprise in developing countries. He also helped form the Business Committee for the Arts in 1967.

In the realm of international affairs, David Rockefeller established and worked with a variety of organizations that furthered his belief in "constructive engagement" and the promotion of dialogue among business executives and government officials across national borders. In 1949, he became a director of the Council on Foreign Relations, an educational institution in which leaders from the field of scholarship and the public and private sectors meet periodically to expand their perspectives on foreign affairs; he served as the council's chair from 1970 to 1985. He also attended the annual Bilderberg meetings, established by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, from their inception in 1954. In 1973, he helped found the Trilateral Commission, an organization designed to promote understanding and cooperation among the nations of North America, Western Europe, and Japan.

In the early and mid‐1960s, Rockefeller helped organize both the Council of the Americas and the Center for Inter‐American Relations, which worked to maximize contributions by private enterprise and cultural and intellectual exchanges designed to promote the development of Latin America. These were reorganized as the Americas Society in 1982. He also helped to establish the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University, which opened in 1994.

David Rockefeller was an officer in the Advisory Council on Japan‐United States Economic Relations and the National Council for U.S.‐China Trade, and a member of the Bulgarian‐U.S. Economic Council; the U.S.‐Egyptian Joint Business Chamber; the U.S.‐Iran Joint Business Council; and a director of U.S.‐U.S.S.R. Trade and Economic Council, Inc.

Rockefeller Center: In the 1980s and 1990s, David Rockefeller played an active role in the financing and ownership of the Manhattan landmark his father had built, Rockefeller Center. In March 1982, he became chair of Rockefeller Center, Inc., which was renamed Rockefeller Group, Inc. (RGI) the following year. He oversaw efforts to beautify, diversify, and unify Rockefeller Center, which included capital improvements to modernize the facility. In January 1985, RGI bought the twelve acres of land underneath the buildings from Columbia University for $400 million, reportedly the highest per‐acre price ever paid for a parcel of urban real estate. A new company, Rockefeller Center Properties, Inc., was formed to offer stock in Rockefeller Center in a public sale; the public offering raised $1.3 billion, which RCPI lent to RGI in exchange for a mortgage on the land and buildings of Rockefeller Center. In September 1989, David Rockefeller and his associates sold 80% of RGI to the Mitsubishi Estate Corporation of Japan for $1.373 billion. Even though the Rockefeller family retained ownership of 20% of Rockefeller Center, the sale of a controlling interest in such a prominent landmark was controversial. But the sale came at the end of a real estate boom in Manhattan and on the eve of a worldwide real estate recession; in the changed marketplace, Rockefeller Center went bankrupt in May 1995.

Disappointed by the bankruptcy of the landmark bearing the family name, David Rockefeller assembled a group of investors that bought Rockefeller Center in March 1996. Rockefeller insisted that his partners agree to hold onto the property for five years before considering a sale. During that time, as the real estate recession ended, the Center's management refurbished the facility and made it more attractive. In December 2000, David Rockefeller and his partners agreed to sell Rockefeller Center to another group of investors, led by Jerry Speyer, for $1.85 billion, thus ending the Rockefeller family's ownership of Rockefeller Center.

Olive Bragazzi (1916-2014) began working as the curator for David Rockefeller in 1960 to catalogue his extensive collections of paintings, sculpture, silver, porcelain, and furniture. For the next three decades, she maintained his growing art collection and performed meticulous research for the first four volumes of the David and Peggy Rockefeller Art Collection catalogue.

Prior to working for Mr. Rockefeller, Ms. Bragazzi was an assistant to Alfred H. Barr, Jr., director of the Museum of Modern Art. Later, in addition to her work with various prominent private art collections, she served as director of the Pierre Matisse Foundation in New York. During the 1960s she established an art gallery in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, where she and her family had spent summers during her childhood. She also authored a handful of art history articles, namely "The Story Behind the Rediscovery of William Harnett and John Peto by Edith Halpert and Alfred Frankenstein" in the American Art Journal (Spring 1984).