July 15, 1908
Ultimately one of the wealthiest men in the United States, Max Fisher is born in Pittsburgh to Russian Jewish immigrants.
He spends most of his youth in Salem, Ohio, a small town between Pittsburgh and Cleveland. After attending Ohio State University, he moves to Detroit and enters his father’s oil business before starting his own company, Aurora Gasoline. Under Fisher’s leadership, the company grows to be one of the largest independent oil companies in the country with nearly 700 gas stations.
Fisher is a generous philanthropist, and after his retirement in 1963, he devotes most of his time to causes in the Jewish community and in Detroit. An adviser to four U.S. presidents, he makes his first visit to Israel in 1954 and dedicates himself to the Jewish state, raising hundreds of millions of dollars through his work as a leader in nearly every national Jewish organization in North America.
As adviser to Richard Nixon, he helps push through the arms airlift during the Yom Kippur War. In 1975, after President Gerald Ford reassesses the U.S.-Israeli relationship, the president and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger seek Fisher’s help in repairing the rift between the countries.
In 1999, the Pincus Fund for Jewish Education in the Diaspora establishes the Max M. Fisher Prize for Jewish education, recognizing Fisher’s role in advancing Jewish education worldwide.
Fisher dies in March 2005 at the age of 96.
Learn more about Max Fisher at the Max M. Fisher Archives.
