Name James DuPont | ||
Died 1991, Watchung, New Jersey, United States | ||
James Maxime DuPont (Edinburgh, Scotland, (1912-04-07)April 7, 1912 — Watchung, New Jersey, United States, 1991) was an American meteorite collector.
His father was Jean Rene Claudius Dupont, an analytical chemist. He is known for having the largest private collection of meteorites in the world at the time of his death, and after his death, they were donated to the Planetary Studies Foundation, where are now known under the name "James M. DuPont Meteorite Collection". This impressive collection had 1,719 individual meteorites, with a total mass over 500 kilograms, and was gathered in over thirty years. These included several which were somewhat controversial and unrecognized, along with a few others that represented new finds awaiting classification. The Planetary Studies Foundation then donated them to the Field Museum of Natural History, the combined collection had more than 1,700 meteors and an estimated value of $3 million, creating world's largest non government meteorite collection.
A resident of Watchung, New Jersey, DuPont founded an industrial thermoplastics company.