George Fisher Baker

George Fisher Baker 1840-1931, American financier and philanthropist, b. Troy, N.Y. Baker was one of the founders of the First National Bank of New York in 1863 and became (1877) its president and then (1909) chairman of its board of directors. Largely through his efforts this bank became one of the strongest financial institutions in the United States. Baker was closely associated with the interests of the house of Morgan; he helped finance James J. Hill in building his railroad empire and backed him in the fight to control the Northern Pacific RR. Baker himself became a leading figure in the world of railroad organization and finance and gained a commanding influence in insurance, utilities, and the steel and rubber industries. His philanthropic bequests were many. The most notable were $6 million to found and support the Harvard graduate school of business administration; $2 million to Cornell Univ.; $1 million to build the Baker Memorial Library at Dartmouth; and the money for Baker Field of Columbia.

Baker, George (b Birkenhead, 1885; d Hereford, 1976). Eng. baritone, especially but not exclusively associated with the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. Also writer and adjudicator. BBC Overseas Music Dir. 1944–7. 2nd wife was sop. Olive Groves (d 1974). CBE 1971.

Baker, George Pierce (1866–1935), theatre scholar. Born in Providence, Rhode Island, he graduated from Harvard in 1887. Baker returned to teach there in 1905, sponsoring the Harvard Dramatic Club when it was founded in 1908 and initiating his soon celebrated 47 Workshop, a laboratory for playwrights whose alumni number among the greatest writers of the first half of the 20th century. In 1925 Baker moved to Yale, where he continued to teach the technique and history of drama, chaired the Department of Drama, and directed the University Theatre. Among his works are The Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist (1907), Some Unpublished Correspondence of David Garrick (1907), Dramatic Technique (1919), and Modern American Plays (1920). Biography: George Pierce Baker and the American Theatre, Wisner Payne Kinne, 1954.