Joseph Wharton Lippincott Jr.

Joseph Wharton Lippincott, Jr., (1914-2003) was Chairman and President of Philadelphia publisher J.B. Lippincott Company (now named “Lippincott Williams & Wilkins”).

He was the son of Joseph W. Lippincott and Elizabeth Schuyler Mills Lippincott. He was a direct descendent of Joshua Ballinger Lippincott, founder of J.B. Lippincott Company, and a great grandson of Joseph Wharton, founder of the Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania.

Mr. Lippincott went to the Meadowbrook School and then to St. Paul’s School before attending Princeton University. In 1937 he joined the family firm he would serve for 41 years. During his years as president, Mr. Lippincott oversaw the rapid expansion of the company in the 1950s and 1960s, the transformation of Lippincott into a public company in 1972, and its eventual acquisition by Harper & Row (now called “HarperCollins”) in 1978.

Many of J.B. Lippincott Company’s well known elementary and high school educational products were launched during his presidency, including Basic Keys to Spelling, Lippincott’s Basic Reading, and Beginning to Read, Write and Listen. Mr. Lippincott was also responsible for expanding the company’s business outside of the United States, and made frequent trips to Europe and across the Pacific to Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines.

Mr. Lippincott was an active supporter of libraries, serving on the boards of Trustees of the Free Library of Philadelphia and of the Ludington Library in Bryn Mawr. He was also on the Boards of the Urban Libraries Council, the Council of the American Library Association, the Council for Florida Libraries, the Friends of the Princeton Library, and the American Library Trustees Association. He regularly attended the annual meeting of the American Library Association (ALA) to present the Joseph W. Lippincott Award for Outstanding Achievement in Librarianship, which was named for and founded by his father in 1937. It is one of the oldest and most prestigious awards given by the ALA.

He married Marie Louise Beck in 1950. Together they had a son, Joseph W. Lippincott, III, who was President of Lippincott Williams & Wilkins from 1998-2000 and 2002-2006. Mr. Lippincott also had a daughter from a previous marriage, Elizabeth L. Mather.