
William Morris, 1st Viscount Nuffield (10 October 1877 – 22 August 1963) was a British industrialist and philanthropist.
Biography[]
William Richard Morris was born in Worcester, Worcestershire, England in 1877, and he was educated in a village school in Cowley near Oxford. He established his own bicycle company in Cowley when he was 16, and in 1902 he designed a motorcycle. In 1907, he set up Morris Garages to repair and sell cars, and in 1913 he built his first car, the Morris Oxford. After World War I, he utilized the latest methods of mass production in order to keep prices down. The business expanded rapidly until 1929, when it held over 50% of the British market, though it subsequently declined, partly through his neglect, until it was merged with Austin to form the British Motor Corporation in 1952. He gave much of his vast fortune away, for example, through the establishment of Nuffield College at Oxford University, along with the Nuffield Foundation to encourage educational and medical development. He was made a peer in 1934, and he died in 1963.