Charles Pfizer

Karl Christian Friedrich Pfizer (; March 22, 1824October 19, 1906), known as Charles Pfizer, was a German-American businessman and chemist who co-founded the Pfizer pharmaceutical company with his cousin, Charles F. Erhart, in 1849, as Chas. Pfizer & Co. Inc. Life and family He was born Karl Christian Friedrich to Karl Frederick Pfizer and Caroline Klotz. Like his older cousin, future business partner and brother-in-law, Karl Erhart, Pfizer was born in Ludwigsburg, Kingdom of Württemberg (now Germany). He emigrated to the United States in October 1848. Pfizer married Anna Hausch, in 1859, in his hometown of Ludwigsburg, where he often visited. They had six children, five of whom survived to adulthood: Charles Jr (1860–1928), Gustavus (1861–1944), Emile (1864–1941), Helen Julia (born 1866, who married Sir Frederick Duncan, 2nd Baronet), Alice (who married Baron of Austria), and Ann (1875–1876). He built a Lutheran Church in New York. Career In 1849, he borrowed US$2,500 from his father to buy a commercial building in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He then co-founded Chas. Pfizer & Co. Inc. The company produced santonin, an antiparasitic, later expanding production to other chemicals.