Kansas City, Mo.

James E. Stowers
85

How'd he get so rich? The founder of privately held mutual fund company American Century Investments, Stowers was a former World War II fighter pilot who launched his first fund in 1958 with $2,500 of his own money. Today, American Century has more than $100 billion under management. A cancer survivor, he and his wife founded in 1994 a multibillion-dollar biomedical research facility called the Stowers Institute for Medical Research.

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