Jeffrey Preston "Jeff" Bezos ( born January 12, 1964) is an American business magnate and investor. He is a technology entrepreneur who has played a key role in the growth of e-commerce as the founder and CEO of Amazon.com, an online merchant of books and later of a wide variety of products. Under his guidance, Amazon.com became the largest retailer on the World Wide Web and a top model for Internet sales.In 2013, Bezos purchased The Washington Post newspaper.As of March 2015, Bezos's personal wealth is estimated to be US$34.8 billion, ranking him number 15 on the Forbes list of billionaires.
Early and Personal life
Bezos was born Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen in Albuquerque, New Mexico to Jacklyn (née Gise) and Ted Jorgensen. His maternal ancestors were settlers who lived in Texas, and over the generations acquired a 25,000-acre (101 km2 or 39 miles2) ranch near Cotulla. Bezos's maternal grandfather was a regional director of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in Albuquerque. He retired early to the ranch, where Bezos spent many summers as a youth, working with him. At an early age, he displayed mechanical aptitude – as a toddler, he tried dismantling his crib.
Bezos's mother Jacklyn was a teenager at the time of his birth. Her marriage to his father lasted a little more than a year. When Jeff was four, she remarried, to Miguel Bezos, a Cuban who immigrated to the United States alone when he was fifteen years old. Miguel worked his way through the University of Albuquerque, married Jacklyn and legally adopted his stepson Jeff. After the wedding, the family moved to Houston, Texas, and Miguel became an engineer for Exxon. The young Jeff attended River Oaks Elementary School in Houston from fourth to sixth grade. As a child, he spent summers at his grandfather's ranch in southern Texas, "laying pipe, vaccinating cattle and fixing windmills."
Bezos often displayed scientific interests and technological proficiency; he once rigged an electric alarm to keep his younger siblings out of his room. The family moved to Miami, Florida, where he attended Miami Palmetto Senior High School. While in high school, he attended the Student Science Training Program at the University of Florida, receiving a Silver Knight Award in 1982. He was high school valedictorian and was a National Merit Scholar.
He attended Princeton University, intending to study physics, but soon returned to his love of computers and graduated summa cum laude, with two Bachelor of Science degrees in electrical engineering and computer science. While at Princeton, he was elected to the honor societies Phi Beta Kappa and Tau Beta Pi. He also served as the President of the Princeton chapter of the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space.
In July 2012, Bezos and his wife personally donated $2.5 million to pass a same-sex marriage referendum in Washington, which was successfully passed.
Bezos has spent $42 million to fund the first full-scale Clock of the Long Now, designed to last 10,000 years.
Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie Bezos, have four children, including an adopted daughter from China and three sons.
Born: January 12, 1964 (age 51), Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States
Nationality: American
Spouse: MacKenzie Bezos (m. 1993)
Net worth: 34.7 billion USD (2015) Forbes
Education: Princeton University (1986), River Oaks Elementary School, Miami Palmetto High School
Parents: Ted Jorgensen, Jacklyn Bezos, Miguel Bezos