Erik Thune established the Foundation in 1954.
Erik Thune was born on October 2nd 1893 on the Danish island of Fejų. He had a mercantile training in accountancy and in October 1914, when he had just turned 21, the expanding Danish Cement Company, F.L. Smidth & Co., employed him to take up a position with the new company branch, the Siam Cement Company, in Bangkok.
From 1925-35 Erik Thune was the General Manager of this company (cf. the photo from app. 1930) and took an active part in the industrial and commercial growth of the region.
In 1936 Erik Thune became Vice President and from 1942 President of F.L. Smidth's US branch, the National Portland Cement Company, in Philadelphia.
From 1946-1958 Erik Thune served as one of the three members of the Corporate Management Group of F.L. Smidth and worked part of the year in Copenhagen.
Erik Thune became a US citizen in 1942. He died in Philadelphia on November 6th 1983.
Erik Thune was a key figure in Danish-American connections, not least because of his economic support during the Second World War to a number of Danes placed in the US and cut off from German occupied Denmark. Among others he helped the Danish nuclear physicist and Nobel Prize winner, Niels Bohr, who had escaped from Denmark and arrived in the US in 1944 and with whom Erik Thune formed a lifelong friendship.
Erik Thune acquired considerable personal wealth and took an early interest in charity work, especially towards children in need. The founding of The Erik Thune Foundation rose naturally from this concern.