Gifford Pinchot (August 11, 1865 - October 4, 1946) was an American forester and politician. Pinchot served as the first Chief of the United States Forest Service from 1905 until his firing in 1910, and was the 28th Governor of Pennsylvania, serving from 1923 to 1927, and again from 1931 to 1935. He was a member of the Republican Party for most of his life, though he also joined the Progressive Party for a brief period. Pinchot is known for reforming the management and development of forests in the United States and for advocating the conservation of the nation's reserves by planned use and renewal.

Gifford Pinchot was born August 11, 1865, to Episcopalian parents in Simsbury, Connecticut, the son of James W. Pinchot, a successful New York City wallpaper merchant, and Mary Eno, daughter of one of New York City's wealthiest real estate developers, Amos Eno. He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy and in 1889, Yale University, where he was a member of Skull and Bones. He had a brother Amos Pinchot and a sister Antoinette (who married the diplomat Alan Johnstone).  The Pinchots made a great fortune by importing French wallpaper  to furnish stately American homes during the late Victorian era. Pinchot's father  James made conservation a family affair and suggested that Gifford should become a forester, asking him just before he left for college in 1885, "How would you like to become a forester?". Gifford studied as a postgraduate at the French National School of Forestry, in Nancy, for a year. He returned home and plunged into the nascent forestry movement, intent on shaping a national forest policy. At Gifford's urging, together James and Gifford endowed the Yale School of Forestry in 1900, and James turned Grey Towers, the family estate at Milford, Pennsylvania, into a "nursery" for the American forestry movement. Family financial affairs were managed by brother Amos Pinchot, thus freeing Gifford to do the more important work of developing forest management concepts. Unlike some others in the forestry movement, Gifford's wealth allowed him to singly pursue this goal without worry of income.  Pinchot's approach set him apart from the other leading forestry experts, especially Bernhard E. Fernow and Carl A. Schenck. Fernow had been Pinchot's predecessor in the United States Department of Agriculture's Division of Forestry before leaving in 1898 to become the first Dean of the New York State College of Forestry at Cornell. Schenck was Pinchot's successor at the Biltmore Estate (widely recognized as the "cradle of American forestry") and founder of the Biltmore Forest School on Biltmore Estate. Their schools largely reflected their approaches to introducing forestry in the United States: Fernow advocated a regional approach and Schenck a private enterprise effort in contrast to Pinchot's national vision.  Perhaps, the men who had the most influence on his development as a forester were Sir Dietrich Brandis, who had brought forestry to the British Empire, and Sir Wilhelm Schlich, Brandis' successor. Pinchot relied heavily upon Brandis' advice for introducing professional forest management in the U.S. and on how to structure the Forest Service when Pinchot established it in 1905.

Where did Pinchot study?
Phillips Exeter Academy