John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the only son of John D. Rockefeller, founder of the Standard Oil Company, and Laura Spelman Rockefeller, was an American financier and philanthropist. He was associated with his father in the creation and development of The Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in 1901 ( now The Rockefeller University) and was on the Board of Trustees of The Rockefeller Institute from its beginning until 1954 and served as the board's president for twenty-one years. Upon his retirement as president in 1950, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. said he always had regarded the institute as "the most significant and the most permanent of any that my father established."