William Gerhard Mennen was born in Newark, New Jersey on December 20, 1884. His father, a German immigrant, founded the Mennen Company, which pioneered the development and marketing of men’s shaving preparations and other personal care products. Mennen graduated from Cornell in 1908 with a degree in mechanical engineering. He soon joined his father’s firm, eventually stepping into the role of president. Throughout his life, Mennen made frequent and generous gifts to Cornell. He gave the Cornell University Library a series of spectacular gifts from his collection of rare books, including all four of the seventeenth-century folio editions of Shakespeare’s plays and first editions of Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll and William Thackeray, along with a significant number of early Bibles and historical works.
