Peter A. Benoliel ’53

Peter died Feb. 17, 2025, at home in St. Davids, Pa. He was 93.

He was born in Philadelphia and graduated from Penn Charter before coming to Princeton. He joined Cannon Club and majored in the Special Program in Humanities with a minor in chemistry. He wrote his thesis on “The Problem of Philosophical Expression in Music in the Light of Schopenhauer, Wagner, and Tristan and Isolde.” After graduation, he served in the Navy for 3½ years, mostly on board the USS Gatling. Peter then joined Quaker Chemical Corp. — the family business — as a chemist, and from 1966 to 1992 was its president and CEO. During that time, Quaker expanded with subsidiaries and ventures in the Netherlands, the U.K., and Mexico, and moved into markets in France, China, Japan, and Brazil. The company launched an initial public offering in 1972 and began trading its shares on the New York Stock Exchange in 1996. It merged in 2019 in a $1.6 billion deal to become Quaker Houghton.

Peter sat on no fewer than a dozen corporate and charity boards, including serving as chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia from 1989 to 1992. He was the Philadelphia Orchestra’s board chairman for some of the ensemble’s rockiest years, starting in 1995, as it endured a painful 64-day musicians’ strike. He loved playing chamber music and participated in Philadelphia’s “Unstrung Heroes” benefit concerts. “There’s no shortage of corporate CEOs who get involved in nonprofit organizations because someone said that’s what a corporate CEO does,” said Joseph H. Kluger, the former chief of the Philadelphia Orchestra who is now an arts and culture consultant. “But Peter really walked the walk of the responsibility of those with resources to give back to the community and make those communities better places to live and work.”

Peter also served as an officer for the Class of 1953 and was class president at the time of his death.

In addition to his wife, Willo Carey, he is survived by five children, three stepchildren, and 25 grandchildren.