Ed Bass

Edward Perry "Ed" Bass (born September 10, 1945) is an American businessman, financier, philanthropist and environmentalist who lives in Fort Worth, Texas. He financed the Biosphere 2 project, an artificial closed ecological system, which was built between 1987 and 1991. He is the chairman of Fine Line, an investment and venture-capital management firm in Fort Worth, and chairman of the board of directors of the Sid W. Richardson Foundation, a philanthropic organization. He was listed as #239 on the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans in 2012, with an estimated net worth of $2 billion. Bass was born in Fort Worth, Texas to Perry R. (1914–2006) and Nancy Lee (née Muse) Bass (1917–2013), the second-oldest of four sons; his brothers are Lee Marshall Bass, Sid Richardson Bass, and Robert Muse Bass. His father, Perry, was an adviser and later partner of his own bachelor uncle, Sid W. Richardson (1891–1959), starting in the 1930s. When Richardson died, he left each of the Bass brothers $2.8 million, and Perry managed the bulk of the family oil fortune, which was initially beset by legal problems. Ed Bass attended Phillips Academy, and graduated from Yale in 1967 with a bachelor's degree in administrative science. He served for a short time in the United States Coast Guard and returned to Yale, studying for a master's degree in architecture, which he did not complete. All four brothers attended Yale, from which their father had also graduated in 1937.