NAME            :                Mark Zuckerberg

OCCUPATION:               Entrepreneur, Computer Programmer, Philanthropist

BIRTH DATE  :               May 14, 1984 (Age: 29)

EDUCATION  :      Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard University

PLACE OF BIRTH:          White Plains, New York

Full Name      :                Mark Elliot Zuckerberg

AKA             :                 Mark Zuckerberg

ZODIAC SIGN :              Taurus

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (born May 14, 1984) is an American computer programmer and internet entrepreneur. He is best known as one of five co-founders of the social networking website Facebook. As of April 2013, Zuckerberg is the chairman and chief executive of Facebook, Inc. and in 2013 his personal wealth was estimated to be US$13.3 billion.

Together with his college roommates and fellow Harvard University students Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes, Zuckerberg launched Facebook from Harvard's dormitory rooms.The group then introduced Facebook onto other campuses nationwide and moved to Palo Alto, California, United States (U.S.) shortly afterwards. In 2007, at the age of twenty-three years, Zuckerberg became a billionaire as a result of Facebook and the number of Facebook users worldwide reached a total of one billion in 2012. Zuckerberg was involved in various legal disputes that were initiated by others in the group, who claimed a share of the company based upon their involvement during the development phase of Facebook.

Since 2010, Zuckerberg has been named among the 100 wealthiest and most influential people in the world by Time magazine as a part of its Person of the Year accolade. Zuckerberg was played by actor Jesse Eisenberg in the 2010 Hollywood film The Social Network in which the rise of Facebook is portrayed.

Early Life

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg was born on May 14, 1984, in White Plains, New York—and raised in Dobbs Ferry, New York—into a comfortable, well-educated family. 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." His father used the program in his dental office, so that the receptionist could inform him of a new patient without yelling across the room. The family also used Zucknet to communicate within the house. Together with his friends, he also created computer games just for fun. "I had a bunch of friends who were artists," he said. "They'd come over, draw stuff, and I'd build a game out of it."

To keep up with Mark's burgeoning interest in computers, his parents hired private computer tutor David Newman to come to the house once a week and work with Mark. Newman later told reporters that it was hard to stay ahead of the prodigy, who began taking graduate courses at nearby Mercy College around this same time.

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. Yet Zuckerberg remained fascinated by computers, and continued to work on developing new programs. While still in high school, he created an early version of the music software Pandora, which he called Synapse. Several companies—including AOL and Microsoft—expressed an interest in buying the software, and hiring the teenager before graduation. He declined the offers.

Time at Harvard

After graduating from Exeter in 2002, Zuckerberg enrolled at Harvard University. By his sophomore year at the ivy league institution, he had developed a reputation as the go-to software developer on campus. It was at that time that he built a program called CourseMatch, which helped students choose their classes based on the course selections of other users. He also invented Facemash, which compared the pictures of two students on campus and allowed users to vote on which one was more attractive. The program became wildly popular, but was later shut down by the school administration after it was deemed inappropriate.

Based on the buzz of his previous projects, three of his fellow students—Divya Narendra, and twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss—sought him out to work on an idea for a social networking site they called Harvard Connection.