Henri Fayol (1841-1925) was a French mining engineer, mining executive and management theorist who helped found modern management. He was born in a suburb of Constantinople in the Ottoman Empire, returned to France as a child, and graduated from the Ecole des Mines de Saint-Etienne in 1860. He ran the Commentry mine from 1866 and later led the Commentry-Fourchambault-Decazeville company.

He is best known for Administration industrielle et generale, published in 1916, which set out his general theory of business administration, often called Fayolism. The ideas grew from practical work, including preventing and fighting underground fires at the mine and r