The Presidents of the AGBU, 1906-2006
Boghos Nubar (1906-1930)
Calouste Gulbenkian (1930-1932)
Calouste Gulbenkian, who was born in Sciutari, Cons¬tantinople, in 1869 and died in Lisbon in 1955, became the AGBU’s second president when he succeeded Boghos Nubar in 1930. A shrewd businessman and big stockholder in Royal Dutch Shell and the Anglo-Iranian Company, he was given the nickname “Mr. Five Percent,” for good reason. But the name conveys a somewhat caricatural image of the man, who was firmly attached to his identity and was also an art-lover and a generous patron of the arts. Until World War I, Gulbenkian lived in London, where he served, until 1914, as the economic attaché of the Ottoman Embassy, and of the Persian Embassy thereafter. Ultimately, he settled in Paris.
Boghos Nubar, who was born in Constantinople in 1851 and died in Paris in 1930, was the founder and first president of the Armenian General Benevolent Union.
The son of Nubar Pasha (1825-1891), who repeatedly served as Egypt’s prime minister, Boghos Nubar took his diploma at the École Centrale in Paris in 1873. He was the director of the Egyptian railways for many years, but was known, first and foremost, for the extensive agricultural and urban development projects that he carried out. He was a co-founder, with Baron Empain, of the present-day city of Heliopolis near Cairo; he was also the inventor of a mechanized plow. From 1912 to 1920, in his capacity as president of the Armenian National ... Read all