Alexander W. Dreyfoos Jr obituary

Alexander W. Dreyfoos Jr obituary – Alexander Wallace Dreyfoos Jr, a philanthropist, and entrepreneur from West Palm Beach, Florida, and Saranac Lake, New York, has died. Dreyfoos was born on March 22, 1932, and died on May 28, 2023, at the age of 91.

He was the only child of cellist Martha Bullard Whittemore Dreyfoos (1898-1977) and Apeda Studios photographer-inventor Alexander W. Dreyfoos Sr. (1876-1951).

He received a Bachelor of Science degree in electronics, optics, and physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1954, thanks to MIT funding after his father’s death.

Dreyfoos, who had already finished ROTC, then served in the United States Air Force in Sembach, Germany, from 1954 to 1956, leading a 40-man photo lab crucial to reconnaissance missions at the age of 22.

Dreyfoos is best known for co-founding the Photo Electronics Company (PEC) with George W. Mergens in 1963 to address color print reproduction issues. The pair created the ground-breaking Video Color Negative Analyzer (VCNA) in Dreyfoos’ basement in Port Chester, New York, and subsequently established a factory in a disused church in Connecticut. Eastman Kodak Corporation offered the VCNA globally.

Dreyfoos then designed the revolutionary LaserColor Printer and collaborated with his son, Robert Dreyfoos, in producing the Professional Video Analyzing Computer, a digital version of the VCNA for PEC (PVAC).

Dreyfoos was a philanthropist who was well-known for his large donations to schools.

In 1997, he made the largest donation to a public school in Florida history, giving $1,000,000 to Palm Beach County School of the Arts, which was renamed Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts.

Dreyfoos made a $1 million donation to Scripps Florida on the John D. MacArthur Campus of Florida Atlantic University in Jupiter, Florida, in 2004.

Dreyfoos’ largest gift was $15 million to MIT for the Stata Center, which includes two buildings named after him and William Gates. This gift was made in memory of Dreyfoos’ late mentor and MIT physics professor, Arthur C. Hardy.

Dreyfoos had ten US patents and several foreign patents covering his inventions at the time of his death.

Dreyfoos is survived by his wife, Renate, daughter Catherine Dreyfoos Carter and son Robert Dreyfoos (Julie); grandchildren Michael Aron Carter (Morgan), Michelle Carter Fenimore (Brian), Travis Dreyfoos (Natalie) and Aron Dreyfoos (Lauren); and great-grandchildren Allison Fenimore, Grayson Carter, and Landon Carter.