Wistar, Isaac Jones

views updated

Isaac Jones Wistar, 1827–1905, American financier, b. Philadelphia; great-nephew of Caspar Wistar. His early manhood was spent adventurously in the West as a muleteer, trapper, and gold miner. In the Civil War he was a brigadier general in the Union army and was wounded four times. After the war he made his fortune by financing railroad building. He established the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology in Philadelphia with gifts of $1 million.

See his autobiography (1914).