News organizations and titles: Founder, publisher, writer, Forbes, 1917-54; syndicated columnist, "Fact & Comment," Hearst newspapers, 1911-42; business and financial editor, New York American, 1912-16; writer and financial editor, Journal of Commerce 1904-approximately 1912; contributor, Commercial and Financial Chronicle, approximately 1904-12; founder, Rand Daily Main, Johannesburg, 1901; reporter and editorial writer at a Dundee, Scotland, newspaper, 1897. Founder of Investors League, 1942.
Legacy: Mr. Forbes founded the magazine bearing his name and wrote numerous books about business. He believed the best way to get news was to look like his sources, so he donned spats and a tux and went to functions where newsmakers would be.
Journalistic Progeny: Many of today's Internet news organizations borrow a page from B.C. Forbes' playbook of creating a news organization that speaks more intimately to its time than existing news outlets. The fact that three Forbes generations have stood at the helm of the independently owned magazine is a tribute to the strength of his original vision.
Personal: Born May 14, 1880, in New Deer, Aberdeenshire, Scotland; died May 6, 1954, in New York City.
Family: Married to Adelaide Stevenson Forbes; four sons, Bruce C., who died in 1964; Malcolm, who died in 1990; Gordon B. and Wallace F. Forbes.
Books: "Finance, Business and the Business of Life," 1915; "Men Who Are Making America," 1917; "Forbes Epigrams," 1922; "Men Who are Making the West," 1923; "Automotive Giants of America," 1925; "How to Get the Most Out of Business," 1927; "101 Unusual Experiences," 1952.
Awards: Applause Award of the Sales Executives Club of New York, 1953.
Education: Attended University College of Dundee; honorary degree of Doctor of Letters from the University of Southern California, 1935.
What he has said about himself or his publication: About why he created Forbes: The main motive behind the magazine "was the ardent desire to promulgate humaneness in business, then woefully lacking." He also said many employers were "mercenarily minded, obsessed only with determination to roll up profits regardless of the suicidal consequences of their shortsighted conduct. They were without consciousness of their civic, social, patriotic responsibilities."