Biography
Paul Mellon was the son of Andrew W. Mellon, US Secretary of the Treasury from 1921 to 1932, and brother of Ailsa Mellon-Bruce. He graduated from The Choate School (now Choate Rosemary Hall) in Wallingford, Connecticut, in 1925, where he wrote for the literary magazine and composed the school hymn, and from Yale in 1929, where he was a member of Chi Psi Fraternity, Scroll and Key and served as vice-chairman of the Yale Daily News. He was a great benefactor of his alma maters, donating the Mellon Arts Center and the Mellon (now Icahn) Science Center to Choate, and two residential colleges and the Yale Center for British Art to Yale. After graduating from Yale he went to England to study at Clare College, Cambridge, receiving a BA in 1931, while his father served as the US Ambassador to the Court of St. James's from 1932 to 1933. He was a founding member of the CRABS, the Clare Rugby and Boating Society (one of the oldest Collegiate Gentlemen's societies still active). In 1938 he received an MA from Clare College. He was a major benefactor to Clare College's Forbes-Mellon library, opened in 1986.
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