Larry Ellison

Lawrence Joseph "Larry" Ellison (born August 17, 1944) is an American internet entrepreneur, businessman and philanthropist. He serves as executive chairman and chief technology officer of Oracle Corporation, having previously been chief executive from its founding until September 2014. In 2014, he was listed by Forbes magazine as the third-wealthiest man in America and as the fifth-wealthiest person in the world, with a fortune of US$56.2 billion.

Ellison was born in New York City but grew up in Chicago. He studied at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and the University of Chicago without graduating before moving to California in 1966. While working at Ampex in the early 1970s, he became influenced by Edgar F. Codd's research on relational database design, which led in 1977 to the formation of what became Oracle. Oracle became a successful database vendor to mid- and low-range systems, competing with Sybase and Microsoft SQL Server, which led to Ellison being listed by Forbes as one of the richest men in the world.