B. Gerald Cantor

Cantor's parents were Rose (née Schwaidelson) and Julius Cantor, Jewish immigrants from Belarus. Born in the Bronx on December 17, 1916, Cantor attended DeWitt Clinton High School. He and his first wife, Leona (deceased) had one son, Jay, who chose not to follow his father into the financial world.

Cantor studied law and finance at New York University between 1935 and 1937 and soon afterwards became a securities analyst on Wall Street. After serving in the army in the South Pacific during the Second World War, he established B.G. Cantor and Company, which would later become Cantor Fitzgerald L.P., a New York City-based partnership that was among the biggest institutional brokers of Government securities in the United States. He stepped down in December 1995 because of declining health. He was also a co-owner of the Kansas City Kings of the National Basketball Association for a time.

Cantor has donated to the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., the UCLA Anderson School of Management, and Cornell University.

When the White House unveiled the redecorated Oval Office in 1993, it displayed a bronze cast of Rodin's "Thinker," which President Clinton had personally arranged to borrow from the Cantor collection. The Cantors also financed a sculpture garden at the White House in 1994. In 1995, he and his wife were awarded the National Medal of Arts.