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Former USCIB Chairman Antonie T. Knoppers passed away on December 16, 2003 at age 88. Dr. Knoppers, who had a long career with Merck & Co., served as the non-executive head of USCIB (then known as the United States Council for the International Chamber of Commerce) from 1970 to 1972.
An irrepressibly inquisitive man, Dr. Knoppers led USCIB during a period of new policy challenges, including growing price inflation, currency upheavals and concerns over resource scarcity. In 1972, he invited the head of the Population Crisis Committee to outline for USCIB’s board of directors possible scenarios for what was feared to be an out-of-control population explosion in poorer countries.
A native of the Netherlands, Dr. Knoppers earned a doctorate in pharmacology in 1941 from the Free University of Leiden. But the country was anything but free at the time, and after World War II he emigrated with his family to the United States, determined never to live under foreign occupation again.
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Antonie Knoppers at USCIB’s 1971 annual meeting
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He joined Merck in 1952, holding various positions in the company’s international division, Merck Sharpe & Dohme, and became president of the division in 1957. In 1970, he was named a director of the company, becoming president and chief operating officer a year later and serving in that capacity until his retirement.
“Man is creative – this excites me,” was a saying of Dr. Knoppers’s cited by his one of his children at his memorial service. He loved music intensely, especially opera, and he served for many years on the board of the Metropolitan Opera.
USCIB wishes to extend its sincere condolences to Dr. Knoppers’s family. We express heartfelt appreciation for his service to the organization and to the business community as a whole.
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