Joseph Pulitzer was a Hungarian-born American journalist and innovative newspaper publisher of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but he is perhaps best known as the founder of the Pulitzer Prize.

Recruited by an American agent, Pulitzer immigrated to the United States in 1864 to serve for one year in the Union army during the U.S. Civil War. Afterward he drifted, arriving in St. Louis, Missouri, in the autumn of 1865. Pulitzer studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1867. That same year he became a naturalized citizen. He began reporting for the German-language newspaper Westliche Post in 1868. In 1869, Pulitzer was elected to the Missouri state legislature, where he gained prominence fighting graft and corruption in the St. Louis county government. He later bought a controlling interest in the Westliche Post and then sold it for a considerable profit. In 1878, Pulitzer bought the...