(Mark Elliot Zuckerberg; Dobbs Ferry, Westchester County, 1984)

Empresario y programador informtico estadounidense. Creador y

presidente de la comunidad virtual Facebook, en el ao 2008, con tan
slo veintitrs aos de edad, se convirti en el multimillonario ms joven
de la lista que publica anualmente la revista Forbes.

Curs estudios en el Ardsley High School y la Phillips Exeter Academy, y

en 2002 ingres en la Universidad de Harvard, Massachusetts. Dos aos
ms tarde, a principios de febrero de 2004, con tan slo diecinueve aos
y junto a sus compaeros de habitacin en la universidad, lanz un
nuevo sitio web, la red social Facebook.

En 2006 Facebook se haba convertido en un fenmeno mundial, con 64

millones de usuarios, concentrados en pases de habla inglesa como
Estados Unidos, Canad y Reino Unido. Slo disponible en ingls en sus
comienzos, en 2008 Facebook ensanch horizontes y estaba disponible
en varios idiomas, entre ellos el francs, el alemn y el espaol.

Sin embargo, no todo eran alegras para este joven talento informtico.
Tres de sus compaeros de universidad emprendieron un juicio contra l
en una corte de Boston afirmando que Zuckerberg se haba apoderado
de la idea.

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg was born on May 14, 1984, in White Plains,
New York, into a comfortable, well-educated family, and raised in the
nearby village of Dobbs Ferry. His father, Edward Zuckerberg, ran a
dental practice attached to the family's home. His mother, Karen,
worked as a psychiatrist before the birth of the couple's four children
Mark, Randi, Donna and Arielle.

Zuckerberg developed an interest in computers at an early age; when

he was about 12, he used Atari BASIC to create a messaging program
he named "Zucknet."
Zuckerberg later studied at Phillips Exeter Academy, an exclusive
preparatory school in New Hampshire. There he showed talent in
fencing, becoming the captain of the school's team. He also excelled in
literature, earning a diploma in classics.

Based on the buzz of his previous projects, three of his fellow students
Divya Narendra, and twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevosssought
him out to work on an idea for a social networking site they called
Harvard Connection. This site was designed to use information from
Harvard's student networks in order to create a dating site for the
Harvard elite. Zuckerberg agreed to help with the project, but soon
dropped out to work on his own social networking site with friends
Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin.

Zuckerberg and his friends created a site that allowed users to create
their own profiles, upload photos, and communicate with other users.
The group ran the sitefirst called The Facebookout of a dorm room
at Harvard until June 2004. After his sophomore year, Zuckerberg
dropped out of college to devote himself to Facebook full time, moving
the company to Palo Alto, California. By the end of 2004, Facebook
had 1 million users.

Zuckerberg seemed to be going nowhere but up, however in 2006, the

business mogul faced his first big hurdle. The creators of Harvard
Connection claimed that Zuckerberg stole their idea, and insisted the
software developer needed to pay for their business losses.
Zuckerberg maintained that the ideas were based on two very different
types of social networks but, after lawyers searched Zuckerberg's
records, incriminating Instant Messages revealed that Zuckerberg may
have intentionally stolen the intellectual property of Harvard
Connection and offered Facebook users' private information to his
friends.

Yet Zuckerberg and Facebook continued to succeed, in spite of the

criticism.Time magazine named him Person of the Year in 2010,
and Vanity Fairplaced him at the top of their New Establishment
list. Forbes also ranked Zuckerberg at No. 35beating out Apple CEO
Steve Jobson its "400" list, estimating his net worth to be $6.9 billion.

On May 19, 2012 , Zuckerberg wed his longtime girlfriend, Priscilla

Chan.

In May 2013, Facebook made the Fortune 500 list for the first time
making Zuckerberg, at the age of 28, the youngest CEO on the list

In November 2015, Zuckerberg and Chan welcomed a daughter, Max,

and Zuckerberg announced he would be taking two months of paternity
leave to spend with his family.

He and his wife also pledged that they would give 99 percent of their
Facebook shares to charity "We are committed to doing our small part
to help create this world for all children,"

"We will give 99% of our Facebook shares currently about $45
billion during our lives to join many others in improving this world for
the next generation."