Most sources agree that John D. Rockefeller was the richest American in history. There are various methods of comparing individuals' wealth across time, including using simple inflation-adjusted totals or calculating an individual's wealth as a share of contemporary gross domestic product (GDP). For example, economic blogger Scott Sumner noted in 2018 that Rockefeller was worth $1.4 billion when he died in 1937, which was about $24 billion in dollars adjusted to 2018. Meanwhile, Bill Gates in 1999 was worth nearly $150 billion in dollars adjusted to 2018.