Andrew Carnegie: Rags to Riches and Beyond (In-Person)
Winter (9 - 13.5 hours) | FULL (Membership Required)
In 1848, the industrial revolution forced the Carnegie family, with 13-year-old Andrew in tow, to emigrate to America in search of economic opportunity.
A quick learner and calculated risk-taker, Andrew Carnegie quickly advanced from the very bottom of the economic scale to create Carnegie Steel. He became America’s wealthiest industrialist alongside the likes of John D Rockefeller, JP Morgan, and Cornelius Vanderbilt. His ascent was not without cost to his workers. Notably, the Homestead strike of 1892, a landmark in US labor history, resulted in the death of several striking steel workers.
Carnegie sold his company in 1901 and proceeded to give away his wealth. His legacy lives on today in the libraries that he funded, the Carnegie Endowment, and the Carnegie Corporation.
We will explore Carnegie’s life and discuss issues which resonate today—economic migration, opposition to organized labor, the accumulation of vast wealth, and its disposal through philanthropic ventures.
This course is dedicated to the late Janette Hannah, a fellow Scot who grew up not far from Carnegie’s childhood home and encouraged me to research and develop an Osher course on this remarkable man.
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Iain Sim
Iain Sim has a PhD degree in Microbiology and 30+ years of R&D experience in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry. He has been leading Osher courses since 2012, interspersing studies on notable historical figures—Margaret Thatcher, Robert Oppenheimer, John Maynard Keynes—with science courses on the human genome and advances in genetic technology.