Charles River Laboratories was founded in 1947 by Dr. Henry Foster, a young veterinarian who set up a small animal breeding operation in a second-floor loft in Boston overlooking the Charles River. His vision was to establish a reliable, standardized source of high-quality laboratory animal models to support medical researchers. Over subsequent decades, under the long-term leadership of his son James C. Foster and modern management teams, the enterprise evolved from a simple breeding facility into a comprehensive global contract research organization supporting worldwide pharmaceutical discovery and preclinical development.