Union Carbide insisted that the settlement agreement ended any possibility of prosecuting Mr. Anderson.

Mr. Anderson had devoted his life to climbing the Union Carbide corporate ladder, arriving at work at 7 a.m. and frequently moving from city to city. His major concern before the accident was disappointing financial results: In 1979, when he was president and chief operating officer, the company had predicted its sales would reach $13 billion in 1983. In fact they were around $9 billion, and earnings dropped more than 90 percent.

After he became chairman and chief executive in 1982, he improved productivity and sales, and acquired several companies, including STP Oil. Ecologists said Union Carbide began shaking off the reputation as a polluter that had long dogged it. Mr. Anderson ruled over an empire with 700 plants in more than three dozen countries.

Then came Bhopal. For the first time in his life, Mr. Anderson couldn’t sleep; at one point he holed up for a week at a hotel in Stamford, Conn. He and his wife, Lillian, spent evenings reading newspaper articles about the tragedy to each other. When they went to restaurants, he was afraid to be seen laughing because people “might not think it was appropriate,” he told The Times.

But he told The Associated Press that he was determined to find something positive in the darkness. Although he acknowledged that “people look at me and think I’m out of my mind to say that this may be a good event,” he envisioned the disaster leading to new safety procedures.

Mr. Anderson was born in Brooklyn on Nov. 29, 1921, to Swedish immigrants who lived in the borough’s Bay Ridge section. They named him for Warren G. Harding, who was the president at the time. He helped his father, a carpenter, install floors, and delivered copies of The Brooklyn Eagle.

He won football and academic scholarships to Colgate, where he majored in chemistry. After graduating in 1942, he enlisted in the Navy and trained to be a fighter pilot, but never saw combat. He played football for a Navy team that had the legendary Bear Bryant as coach. After his discharge, he made the rounds of chemical companies and took the first job offered him — by Union Carbide.