Steve Jobs

Name: Steven Paul Jobs
Born: February 24, 1955 at San Francisco, California, U.S.
Died : October 5, 2011 at Palo Alto, California, U.S.
Occupation: Chairman, Apple Inc.
Years active: 1974–2011
Net worth:  $8.3 billion (2011)
Board member of The Walt Disney Company, Apple, Inc.
Religion: Buddhism
Spouse: Laurene Powell Jobs
Children: 4
Relatives: Mona Simpson (sister)

Steven Paul “Steve” Jobs was an American computer entrepreneur and inventor. He was co-founder,chairman, and chief  executive officer of Apple Inc. Jobs also previously served as chief executive of Pixar Animation Studios; he became a member of the board of directors of The Walt  Disney Company in 2006, following the acquisition of Pixar by Disney. He was credited in Toy Story (1995) as an executive producer.

In the late 1970s, Jobs, with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Mike Markkula, and others, designed, developed, and marketed one of the first commercially  successful lines of personal computers, the Apple II series. In the early 1980s, Jobs was among the first to see the commercial potential of Xerox PARC’s mouse- driven graphical user interface, which led to the creation of the Macintosh. After losing a power struggle with the board of directors in 1985, Jobs resigned from  Apple and founded NeXT, a computer platform development company specializing in the higher-education and business markets. Apple’s subsequent 1996 buyout of  NeXT brought Jobs back to the company he co-founded, and he served as its CEO from 1997 until 2011.

In 1986, he acquired the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm Ltd which was spun off as Pixar Animation Studios. He remained CEO and majority shareholder at  50.1 percent until its acquisition by The Walt Disney company in 2006. Consequently Jobs became Disney’s largest individual shareholder at 7 percent and a member  of Disney’s Board of Directors.

On August 24, 2011, Jobs announced his resignation from his role as Apple’s CEO. In his letter of resignation, Jobs strongly recommended that the Apple executive  succession plan be followed and Tim Cook be named as his successor. Per his request, Jobs was appointed chairman of Apple’s board of directors. On October 5,  2011, Apple announced that Jobs had died. He was 56 years old.