Who was director of the FBI from 1924 to 1972?

John Edgar Hoover (January 1, 1895 – May 2, 1972), better known as J. Edgar Hoover, was the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States. He was appointed as the fifth director of the Bureau of Investigation — the FBI's predecessor — in 1924 and was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director until his death in 1972 at the age of 77.

Later in life and after his death, Hoover became a controversial figure as evidence of his secretive abuses of power began to surface. He was found to have exceeded the jurisdiction of the FBI, and to have used the FBI to harass political dissenters and activists, to amass secret files on political leaders, and to collect evidence using illegal methods. Hoover consequently amassed a great deal of power and was in a position to intimidate and threaten sitting presidents.

Hoover remained director of the FBI until he died in his Washington home of a heart attack, on May 2, 1972. His body lay in state in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, where Chief Justice Warren Burger eulogized him. President Richard Nixon delivered another eulogy at the funeral service in the National Presbyterian Church, and called Hoover "one of the Giants, whose long life brimmed over with magnificent achievement and dedicated service to this country which he loved so well." Hoover was buried in the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C., next to the graves of his parents.