Nestlé, Henri

Nestlé, Henri (1814–90) founded a company in his name, but not a dynasty. He was born in Frankfurt, the eleventh of fourteen children, only seven of whom reached adulthood—a fact often cited as inspiration for his invention of an infant feeding formula. He was at first apprenticed to a pharmacist. Having some youthful involvement in the political opposition surrounding the student uprising of 1833, Henri—or Heinrich as he then was—left the family nest (and his patronymic did indeed mean nest) for Vevey in French Switzerland. There he continued as a pharmacist and, his training once finished, he changed his name to fit better with his French surroundings.