T. Boone Pickens

T. Boone Pickens
Pickens at the 2011 Time 100 gala
Born	Thomas Boone Pickens, Jr. (1928-05-22) May 22, 1928 (age 88) Holdenville, Oklahoma, U.S.
Residence	Dallas, Texas
Alma mater	Oklahoma State University
Occupation	Chairman of BP Capital Management
Net worth	US$500 million
Spouse(s)	1) Lynn O'Brien (m. 1949; div. 1971) 2) Beatrice Carr (m. 1972; div. 1998) 3) Nelda Cain (m. 2000; div. 2004) 4) Madeleine Paulson (m. 2005; div. 2012) 5) Toni Brinker (m. 2014)
Children	Elizabeth Pickens Michael Pickens Pamela Pickens Thomas B. Pickens III Deborah Pickens
Website	www.boonepickens.com

Thomas Boone Pickens, Jr. (born May 22, 1928), known as T. Boone Pickens, is an American business magnate and financier. Pickens chairs the hedge fund BP Capital Management. He was a well-known takeover operator and corporate raider during the 1980s. As of November, 2016, Pickens has a net worth of $500 million.

Pickens was born in Holdenville, Oklahoma, the son of Grace (née Molonson) and Thomas Boone Pickens. His father worked as an oil and mineral landman (rights leaser). During World War II, his mother ran the local Office of Price Administration, rationing gasoline and other goods in three counties. Pickens was the first child born via Caesarean section in the history of Holdenville hospital.

At age 12, Pickens delivered newspapers. He quickly expanded his paper route from 28 papers to 156. Pickens later cited his boyhood job as an early introduction to "expanding quickly by acquisition", a business practice he favored later in life.

When the oil boom in Oklahoma ended in the late 1930s, Pickens' family moved to Amarillo, Texas. Pickens attended Texas A&M on a basketball scholarship, but he lost the scholarship and transferred to Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State University), where he majored in geology. He is a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity. He graduated from Oklahoma State with a degree in geology in 1951. Following his graduation, Pickens was employed by Phillips Petroleum. He worked for Phillips until 1954. In 1956, following his period as a wildcatter, he founded the company that would later become Mesa Petroleum.