Alfred Beit (15 February 1853 – 16 July 1906) was an Anglo-German gold and diamond magnate in South Africa, and a major donor and profiteer of infrastructure development on the African continent. He also donated much money to university education and research in several countries, and was the "silent partner" who structured the capital flight from post-Boer War South Africa to Rhodesia. Beit's assets were structured around the so-called Corner House Group, which through its holdings in various companies controlled 37 per cent of the gold produced at the Witwatersrand's goldfields in Johannesburg in 1913.
Life and career
thumb|left|Mrs Laura Beit (Alfred and Otto Beit's mother), by [[Leopold Graf von Kalckreuth|Leopold von Kalckreuth]]
Born and brought up in Hamburg, German Confederation, he was the eldest son and second of six children of an affluent Jewish-German citizen of Hamburg. His younger siblings included Otto Beit. Alfred Beit was an unpromising scholar and was apprenticed to Jules Porgès & Cie, the Amsterdam diamond firm where he developed a talent for examining stones.
Beit made his first fortune in property speculation in South Africa. Responding to a demand for business premises, he bought a piece of land and built twelve corrugated iron sheds for offices and rented eleven out monthly and kept one for himself. Twelve years later he sold the land for a considerable profit. but was elected vice-president a few years later. With the death of Rhodes in 1902, Beit, as one of the trustees, helped control the enormous estate, currently being helped by the Oppenheimer family of De Beers and Anglo-American.
Beit never married and had no children. He died at Tewin Water on 16 July 1906 after seeing a rapid deterioration in his health. He left an estate of £8,049,886 (equivalent to £ billion in ).
The Beit Trust and other donations
thumb|Imperial College, London
During his lifetime, Beit made generous donations for scientific work and education. In 1905 he founded a chair of colonial history at the University of Oxford, which is now the Beit Professorship of History of the British Commonwealth. In 1906 he made the donation of two million mark to the stock capital of the Hamburgische Wissenschaftliche Stiftung, a charity dedicated to spend its interest for the benefit of a precursor of the University of Hamburg.
In his will he set up the Beit Trust through which he bequeathed large sums of money (£1,200,000) for infrastructure development in the former Northern and Southern Rhodesia, later modified to university education and research in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi.
Significant infrastructure projects financed by the Trust include the Birchenough Bridge in the former Southern Rhodesia, named after Sir Henry Birchenough, chairman of the Beit Trust from 1931 until 1937 and whose ashes are buried beneath the structure of the bridge. Ralph Freeman, the bridge's designer, was also the structural designer on the Sydney Harbour Bridge and consequently the two bridges bear a close resemblance, although Birchenough is only two-thirds as long as the Australian bridge. It was built by Dorman Long and completed in 1935.