[1st Bart.]. British South African financier, born at Darmstadt in 1850, entered a banking house in Frankfort, and early in 1870 came to London as a clerk. On the outbreak of the Franco-German War he returned to Germany to take his place in the army, and was present at the fall of Paris. At the end of 1871 he was sent by Mr. Jules Forges, diamond merchant of London and Paris, on a mission to Kimberley. There he remained till 1880, when he was transferred to London as English representative of the firm of Forges and Wernher, interested not only in diamonds but in the gold mines of South Africa. In 1888, when the Kimberley diamond mines were amalgamated by Cecil Rhodes and Alfred Beit, he became a life governor of the De Beers Corporation. Beit was now a member of his firm, and in 1889, when Forges retired, the name of the firm was changed to Wernher, Beit & Co. Out of his enormous fortune, Sir Julius Wernher, who was created a baronet in 1905, spent large sums on public objects, including education; he gave £10,000 to the National Physical Laboratory and, with Beit, endowed the South African University with £500,000. He died in London on the 21st of May 1912.
