American financier and philanthropist. Harriman was born on December 24, 1895 in New York City. He was the youngest of five surviving children of Mary Williamson Averell and Edward Henry Harriman. Among his siblings was W. Averell Harriman, the financier and government official, four years his senior. Edward H. Harriman's estate was substantial, variously estimated between $70 million and $100 million upon his death in 1908, leaving his wife and children well provided for. Roland, whom friends and family sometimes called "Bunny," was educated at Groton School, from which he graduated in 1913, and Yale University (B.A., 1917), where he was a member of Psi Upsilon fraternity. He was also a member of Skull and Bones with his classmate and friend Prescott Bush. On April 12, 1917, he married Gladys Fries. During World War I he served for 10 months as an inspector with the rank of lieutenant in the United States Army Ordnance Department; stricken with pneumonia and influenza, he was honorably discharged in January 1919. After regaining his health in California, in November 1919, Harriman joined the Merchant Shipbuilding Corporation, a firm in which his brother W. Averell Harriman had an interest. In 1922 Harriman joined W. A. Harriman Company, investment bankers in New York City, and in 1923 he became its vice president. In 1927 the two brothers formed the banking firm Harriman Brothers and Company. In 1931 the firm was merged with Brown Bros. & Co., with Roland as vice president. Headquartered on Wall Street, Brown Brothers Harriman started with nine partners and about 200 employees, performing specialized banking services for customers, mainly medium-sized corporations; it was not a member of the Federal Reserve System or the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. In 1968 Harriman and three other senior partners at Brown Brothers (Robert A. Lovett, secretary of defense under President Harry Truman; Prescott Bush, former senator from Connecticut; and Knight Woolley — all Yale men) moved "upstairs," literally and figuratively, to make way for the younger partners, one of whom was Robert Roosa, former undersecretary of the U.S. Treasury. In 1975 a few years prior to Harriman's death, there were 29 partners and approximately 1,000 employees. Harriman served as the chairman of the Union Pacific Railroad for 23 years. Harriman died on February 16, 1978 in Arden, New York.