Daniel K. Ludwig

Daniel Keith Ludwig was born in 1897 to Daniel Franklin Ludwig (1873–1960) and Florabelle Leslie (1876–1961) in South Haven, Michigan, on the shores of Lake Michigan. His grandfather, John G. Ludwig (1842–1920), was one of seven brothers in a family of 13, most of them born in Pennsylvania. Four of Daniel's granduncles made their living as captains of Great Lakes vessels. His grandfather's brother, Lancaster Columbus Ludwig (1855–1954), served as a captain on a passage steamer from South Haven to Chicago for many decades.

The senior Daniel and his wife Florabelle separated when young Daniel was 15. Daniel Sr. took the youth to Port Arthur, Texas to live with his grandfather John G. Ludwig. Florabelle Ludwig was left alone in South Haven without any means of support. She remarried Daniel Robert Martin in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1915 and resided in the state of Washington the rest of her life. Daniel Sr. moved to Virginia and remarried Isabel Rutherford. Daniel Sr. died in Manatee, Florida in 1960.

Ludwig's first venture into shipping was at the age of nine, when he salvaged a 26-foot (8 m) boat. He left school at the end of eighth grade to work in various shipping-related jobs on Lake Michigan and in Texas, directly learning such trades as machinist, marine engineer, and ship handler. In Port Arthur, he sold supplies to sailing ships and steamers. He returned to Michigan to take a job at a marine engine plant, which sent him to the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.

At 19, Ludwig established a freighter business by transporting molasses and lumber around the Great Lakes. There are rumors of his engaging in rum running during the Prohibition era.

In the 1930s, he developed a novel approach to financing further expansion, by borrowing the construction cost of tankers and using pre-agreed charters as collateral. His National Bulk Carriers became one of the largest American shipping companies, and he eventually owned about 60 vessels. In the 1940s, one of his shipyards in Virginia developed a method to use welding instead of riveting, which saved time during World War II, when there was huge demand for new ships. After the war, he had ships built in Japan, where labor costs were lower. His ships transported oil around the world; in the 1950s he pioneered the construction and use of the new oil supertankers.

Ludwig diversified into a wide range of holdings: an oil refinery, banking, cattle ranching, insurance, and real estate. He invested in various mining and exploration projects on nearly every continent: the Americas, Africa, Australia and the Middle East. He created a chain of luxury hotels in Mexico, Bermuda and the Bahamas, and developed Westlake Village, California. At his peak, he owned more than 200 companies in 50 countries, and his fortune was estimated at $4.5 billion.

Ludwig married Gladys Madeline Ludwig (1904–1978), in Florida on October 29, 1928. She gave birth to her daughter Patricia Margaret born on October 8, 1936. Estranged from his wife, Ludwig did not acknowledge the girl as his daughter. The couple divorced in April 1937.

Believing Patricia might at some later time try to challenge the terms of his will and claim part of his estate, Daniel Ludwig had blood samples frozen in the 1970s that could be used for genetic testing if ever necessary. Patricia Ludwig did file a lawsuit in the 1990s after his death, but DNA analysis proved Ludwig was not her father, and the case was dismissed. Katherine Jones, Patricia's aunt, claimed that everyone in the family thought that Patricia's father was James Sullivan, a sales rep who died in a car accident in 1939.

Several months after his divorce, Ludwig married Gertrude Virginia "Ginger" Higgins (January 13, 1897 – April 8, 1993), a widow with three children from a previous marriage. They lived in the penthouse at the Park Cinq, a co-op in Manhattan, and remained married until his death there on August 27, 1992.

Beginning in 1971, Ludwig sold off many of his foreign interests, using the funds to endow the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, which he founded in Switzerland. It became his primary interest in his later years. Since his death in 1992, it has distributed over a billion dollars around the world for cancer research.

Under the terms of his will, Ludwig Centers were established in 2006 at six United States research institutions (Johns Hopkins University, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Stanford University and the University of Chicago). To date, they have received US$900 million from the Virginia and Daniel K. Ludwig Fund for Cancer Research.

The Centers and the Ludwig Institute are now collectively known as Ludwig Cancer Research. By the terms of the grant, their directors and scientists are to work collaboratively with each other and with the Institute.

In Canada Rodrigue Choquette, alias Roddy Choquette, was one of his finance advisor.