On January 4 John Richard Simplot, founder of the J. R. Simplot company, would have celebrated his 107th birthday.

At the time of his death in September 2008, J. R. Simplot was 99 and also the oldest billionaire on the Forbes 400 list. And all this after having dropped out of school at the age of 14, because, in the man’s own words “”I didn’t get along in school. I just didn’t like it.”

In 1953, his company J. R. Simplot, which had by then already become the largest provider of fresh potatoes in the US during World War II, was the first to begin commercializing frozen French fries at a large level, thanks to a discovery by one of the company’s scientists, chemist Ray L. Dunlap, and in 1966, Simplot’s frozen French fries began to be used by McDonald’s fast food outlets around the US, contributing to the growth of the fast food industry at a global level.

His legacy goes on as his company continues to be one of the largest privately held agribusinesses in the United States.