Calouste sarkis gulbenkian biography

GULBENKIAN, CALOUSTE (b. Constantinople, 23 March 1869; d. Lisbon, 20 July 1955; Figure 1), Armenian oil financier, art collector, and philanthropist.

Calouste Gulbenkian was the eldest son of Sarkis, an importer-exporter, and Dirouhi, who was said to have descended from Persian Armenians.

His father’s standing in Ottoman society offered young Calouste an excellent education in Armenian, French, and English.

Calouste sarkis gulbenkian biography wikipedia

In 1883, he studied in Marseille before moving to London to study applied sciences at King’s College, London, from 1884 to 1887.

In 1888, Gulbenkian took a formative trip to Baku, a center of oil production in the Russian Empire.

He collected his impressions of the nascent oil industry and techniques for oil production, refinery, and transport in an article called “La Transcaucasie et le pétrole russe,” which appeared in Revue des deux Mondes in May 1891.

Later that year, the article was expanded into a book, La Trans