Jon Huntsman Sr., the son of a music teacher in the heart of the Idaho potato country who rose to become a billionaire industrialist and philanthropist in Utah and the father of that state’s governor, died on Friday at his home in Salt Lake City. He was 80.

Gary Chapman, a spokesman for the Huntsman Corporation, the specialty chemical company where Mr. Huntsman was executive chairman, confirmed the death but declined to give the cause. He had been ill for an extended period of time.

In early 1970s, Mr. Huntsman built a packaging company that created many of the first plastic plates, bowls and fast-food containers, including the plastic “clamshell” that held McDonald’s Big Mac. After selling the company, he went on to found the Huntsman Corporation, an $8 billion multinational operation that produces chemicals used in everything from clothing to automobiles.

He also served in the Nixon administration and in 1988 ran unsuccessfully for governor in Utah.

But he became known as much for his philanthropy as for his business and political ambitions. In 1992, after both of his parents died of cancer and he, too, battled the disease, he created the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah with a $10 million grant, and in the years since, he and his family donated more than $1.4 billion to cancer research.