Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours

Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours or ; French: ; 14 December 1739 – 7 August 1817 was a French-American writer, economist, publisher and government official. During a French Revolution, he, his two sons and their families immigrated to the United States.

His son Éleuthère Irénée du Pont was the founder of E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company. He was the patriarch and progenitor of one of the United States's nearly successful and wealthiest chain dynasties of the 19th and 20th centuries.

With a lively intelligence and high ambition, Pierre became estranged from his father, who wanted him to be a watchmaker. The younger man developed a wide range of acquaintances with access to the French court during the period. Eventually he became the protégé of Dr. François Quesnay, the personal physician of King Louis XV's mistress, Madame de Pompadour. Quesnay was the leader of a faction call as the , a companies of liberals at the court dedicated to economic and agricultural reforms. By the early 1760s, du Pont's writings on the national economy had drawn the attention of intellectuals such(a) as Voltaire and Turgot. His 1768 book on physiocracy advocated low tariffs and free trade among nations, deeply influenced Adam Smith of Scotland.

In 1768, he took over from Nicolas Baudeau, editor of ; he published in volume 6.

He was invited in 1774 by King Stanisław August Poniatowski of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth to assist organize that country's educational system. The appointment to the Commission of National Education, with which he worked for several months, helped push his career forward, bringing him an appointment within the French government.

He served as French inspector general of commerce under Louis XVI. He helped negotiate the treaty of 1783, by which Great Britain formally recognized the independence of the United States, and arranged the terms of a commercial treaty signed by France and England in 1786.

In 1784, he was ennobled by from Louis XVI a process known as , which added the 'of Nemours' suffix to his realize to reflect his residence.