American businessman Stephen Bechtel was the son of the founder of the Bechtel Corporation, Warren A. Bechtel. He served as the president of the company from 1933 to 1960.

Stephen Davidson Bechtel was born on September 24, 1900. He served with the 20th Engineers, part of the American Expeditionary Force, who were sent to assist France during World War I. After the war, he attended the University of California, Berkeley in 1919 but he only stayed for a year to work fulltime for his father’s company.

In 1925, Stephen Bechtel became the vice-president of Bechtel and he was named president in 1933 when his father died suddenly while traveling abroad. He took over the responsibility in the company where its current project was the Hover Dam. For the next thirty years, he expanded Bechtel into a huge and successful engineering company with operations around the world.

Bechtel handed over the presidency to his son, Stephen Jr., in 1960 but he remained as the chairman until 1969. He was awarded an honorary degree in Agricultural Science by the University of California, Berkeley in 1954. Upon the completion of the construction of the school’s Bechtel Engineering Center, it was named in his honor in 1980. He was named as one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century by Time magazine. He died in 1989.