Steve Jobs (February 24, 1955-October 5, 2011)
Steve Jobs, an American computer entrepreneur and innovator, was perhaps best known as the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple Inc. Few know, however, that his resume also includes serving as Chief Executive of Pixar Animation Studies, and later on, member of the Board of Directors at the Walt Disney Company in 2006.
In his young days, Jobs would often attend after-school lectures at the Hewlett-Packard Company in Palto Alto, California. He was eventually hired there as a summertime employee and worked for Steve Wozniak.
After high school, Jobs attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon where he dropped out after one semester. He lived a minimalist lifestyle at the time, sleeping on friends’ dorm-room floors, returning Coke bottles for food money, and getting meals at the local Hare Krishna Temple.
Jobs returned to California in 1974 where he eventually designed, developed, and marketed, with longtime friend Steve Wozniak, the first successful lines of personal computers, the Apple II series.
In 1985, Jobs resigned from Apple and founded NeXT, a computer platform development company specializing in higher-education and business markets. A little on down the road, Apple bought out NeXT, and Jobs came back to the company he helped found to serve as its CEO from 1997 to August 2011.
It was published in 2010 that Jobs’s net worth was $8.3 billion, making him the 42nd wealthiest American (at the time). On August 21, 2011, with his health deteriorating due to pancreatic cancer, Jobs resigned as Apple’s CEO. He remained as chairman of the company’s board up until his death in October 2011.
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