The New York Times reports that the son of publishing magnates Alfred A. and Blanche Knopf (and founder of his own publishing house, Atheneum, which merged with another independent house in 1978 and was acquired by Macmillan in 1984) has passed away at the age of 90.

Mr. Knopf was born in White Plains, N.Y., on June 17, 1918. At 7 he was sent to boarding school, first at the Riverdale Country Day School, in the Bronx, then from 1933 until 1937 at Phillips Exeter Academy. The summer after he graduated from Exeter, according to a 1959 story in Time magazine, he ran away from home, despondent over being turned down by Princeton and determined (he said in a note) not to return until he made good. Following a police search, he was found in Salt Lake City, barefoot, hungry and broke.