William Knox D'Arcy

William Knox D'Arcy was born in Newton Abbot, Devon, England in 1849 and emigrated to Queensland, Australia, as a young man, where he built a legal and business practice before striking extraordinary wealth through his investment in the Mount Morgan gold mine — one of the richest gold deposits ever discovered in Australia. The Mount Morgan fortune, which eventually yielded more than Â$3 million for D'Arcy personally, gave him the capital to pursue speculative investment on a grand scale. By the early 1900s, D'Arcy was a wealthy London socialite with connections to the British colonial establishment and a growing interest in the emerging petroleum industry.

William Knox D'Arcy obtained the original concession from the Persian Shah in 1901 that ultimately led to the founding of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. For seven years between 1901 and 1908, D'Arcy personally funded exploration drilling in Persia at enormous cost — spending the equivalent of many millions of modern dollars before the breakthrough discovery at Masjid-i-Suleiman in May 1908. Though he partnered with the Burmah Oil Company in 1905 when his resources were nearly exhausted, D'Arcy retained a significant financial interest in the newly formed Anglo-Persian Oil Company and served as a director from its incorporation in 1909 until his death in 1917. He is widely credited as the individual most responsible for the discovery of Middle Eastern oil and the founding of what would become one of the world's most powerful energy companies. D'Arcy received relatively modest personal recognition during his lifetime for a discovery that transformed global geopolitics, economics, and the physical landscape of the 20th century.