Daniel Nicol Dunlop
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Daniel Nicol Dunlop (December 28, 1868, Kilmarnock, Scotland — 1935) was the founder of the World Power Conference, and a theosophist-turned-anthroposophist. He was an artist, and the father of Ronald Ossory Dunlop.
Dunlop lost his mother at the age of five and was brought up by his grandfather on the Isle of Arran. He eventually moved to Dublin where he befriended the poets Æ (George William Russell) and William Butler Yeats, and became active in the Irish Theosophical Society. He was also known to James Joyce, and gets a mention in Ulysses.
Dunlop later moved to America, and in 1896 was employed by the American Westinghouse Electrical Company, becoming later assistant manager, and then manager of its European Publicity Department. In 1911 he helped to found, and became secretary and then director of the British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers' Association (BEAMA) in London. Dunlop did an immense amount in assisting the development of the British electrical industry generally, and towards the close of his life was elected independent chairman of the Electrical Fair Trading Council and chairman of the executive council of the World Power Conference (the precursor to the World Energy Council).
A year of two after World War I, Dunlop began to organise the World Power Conference, which subsequently became the World Energy Council.
Dunlop eventually dedicated himself to anthroposophy after meeting its founder Rudolf Steiner in England. When in England Dunlop also enlisted the help of fellow anthroposophist Walter Johannes Stein in the hope of founding a World Economic Conference, but his untimely death prevented this. Thomas Meyer has written Dunlop's biography: D.N. Dunlop: A Man of Our Time.
