John C. Bogle

He and his twin brother worked for their board. The family had money and lost it in the Depression, the father drank and the marriage broke, and their mother got the boys out of the public high school near the Jersey shore and into Blair Academy on work scholarships. Bogle was good at arithmetic the way some people are good at music. He went to Princeton on that, and spent his junior and senior years writing 130 pages titled The Economic Role of the Investment Company. Walter Morgan, who had founded the Wellington Fund, read the thesis and hired its author in 1951.

He rose to chairman of Wellington's funds by 1970 and was out in January 1974, fired over a merger he had approved and later called shameful and inexcusable. The terms of the split barred him from managing money for clients, so he built a company that would not have to. Vanguard, incorporated in 1974 and open for business on May 1, 1975, took its name from Nelson's flagship at the Nile and was owned by its own funds, and therefore by its own customers, with no outside shareholders to pay. The First Index Investment Trust followed, tracking the S and P 500 and requiring nobody to pick anything. The underwriters wanted 150 million dollars and raised 11. Critics called it Bogle's Folly and un-American. Paul Samuelson later ranked it with the wheel and the alphabet.

His heart nearly ended it several times over. The first cardiac arrest came at 31. At 38 he was diagnosed with arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia, a rare disease of the heart muscle. He ran Vanguard through decades of it, gave up the chief executive's job in 1996 at 66, and then had a heart transplant he had been considered too old to survive. He came back with the title senior chairman, and the company he had built would not have him. His handpicked successor John Brennan had the job, the two men fell out, and Bogle left in 1999 for a small research center that sat on the Vanguard campus and was not part of Vanguard. He spent 20 years criticizing the industry from 100 yards away.

He died at home in Bryn Mawr on January 16, 2019, at 89. Warren Buffett said that day that Bogle had done more for American investors as a whole than any individual he had known. He was worth about 80 million dollars, which for the founder of a firm that size is close to nothing. Vanguard managed roughly 4.4 trillion dollars when he died and about 12 trillion by 2025. Whether he actually invented the index fund is contested, since one was set up for the public in 1973 by Rex Sinquefield, but nobody argues about who sold the idea to everybody else.

John C. Bogle's life against the full span of the corpus.

• The Economic Role of the Investment Company article
  The 130-page Princeton thesis that got him hired 1951
• The Vanguard Group company
  Incorporated 1974 and trading from May 1, 1975 1975
• First Index Investment Trust company
  The forerunner of the Vanguard 500 Index Fund 1976
• Bogle on Mutual Funds book
  The first of thirteen books 1993
• Common Sense on Mutual Funds book
  Written the year he left Vanguard 1999
• The Little Book of Common Sense Investing book
  The argument compressed for people who own no index funds yet 2007

• 1947 aged ~18 Graduates from Blair Academy on a work scholarship
• 1951 aged ~22 Walter Morgan reads his thesis and hires him at Wellington
• 1970 aged ~41 Becomes chairman of Wellington's mutual funds
• January 1974 aged 44 Leaves Wellington after being fired over the 1966 merger He called it shameful and inexcusable and said he learned a lot.
• May 1, 1975 aged 45 The Vanguard Group opens for business Named after HMS Vanguard, Nelson's flagship at the Nile.
• 1976 aged ~47 The First Index Investment Trust raises 11 million against a 150 million target Bankers advised cancelling the offering. He went ahead.
• 1996 aged ~67 Steps down as chief executive and receives a heart transplant at 66
• 1999 aged ~70 Leaves Vanguard after falling out with his successor He moved to a research center on the company campus that was not part of the company.
• January 16, 2019 aged 89 Dies at home in Bryn Mawr at 89

• Warren Buffett b. 1930
  Value investor whose disciplined approach built one of the largest personal fortunes in American history. endorsed by
• Paul Samuelson 1915–2009
  First American to win the Nobel Prize in Economics, whose textbook defined the field for decades. influenced by
• Charles Schwab b. 1937
  Founder of the discount brokerage that democratized stock trading for ordinary investors. rival in cheap investing
• Benjamin Graham 1894–1976
  Established value investing and securities analysis as a professional discipline. the stock-picking tradition he argued past
• Theodore Roosevelt 1858–1919
  26th President known for progressive reforms, conservation efforts, and assertive foreign policy. the hero he named himself after