Éleuthère Irénée du Pont

Du Pont had trained under the chemist Antoine Lavoisier at the French royal powder works, and his family left revolutionary France for the United States in 1800. Finding American gunpowder poor, he used that training, French machinery and family capital to open mills on Delaware's Brandywine Creek in 1802. The company that grew from them became DuPont, one of the longest-surviving industrial firms in America.