Edward Mead Johnson (April 23, 1852 – March 20, 1934) was an American businessman and one of the co-founders of Johnson & Johnson. In 1886, Edward Mead Johnson abandoned a career in law and joined his two brothers Robert Wood Johnson I, and James Wood Johnson to found Johnson & Johnson in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He left that family surgical supply business in 1895 to found what became Mead Johnson, which produces nutrition products for infants and children marketed in fifty countries around the world.
Life and career
Johnson earned a degree in law from the University of Michigan and practiced law briefly before going into business with his brothers. He co-founded Johnson & Johnson together with his brothers James Wood Johnson and Robert Wood Johnson I, a company that remained privately held by the family until 1944, when the firm made its first public stock offering.[1]
His first son, Ted, was born in 1888 with a congenital heart defect and feeding problems.[2]