Many billionaires never went to college. Some others, like Mark Zuckerberg, are famous for dropping out.
But on the other hand, at least 35 US billionaires read day and night, spending years at desks to get a doctorate, before landing a place in the world of zaplotus, as reported by Forbes.
The top 5
In all, at least nine American billionaires earned a doctorate in engineering, the most popular degree among all doctorates. Another 26 earned their PhDs in fields ranging from biology and chemistry to business research, marketing and social policy.
These billionaires, who represent 5% of the 735 Americans on Forbes' 2023 list, have a combined fortune of $165 billion. Many have made money from their specialized knowledge, while others have become rich in completely different fields.
The top 5 PhDs by wealth ratio are as follows:
1. Mechanics
2. Computer science
2.Biology (there is a tie for second place)
4. Chemistry
5. Physics
The number 1
Long before he became CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt met his future wife Wendy while wandering up and down Telegraph Avenue as a PhD student at UC Berkeley. “It felt like a new world was unfolding right here on campus, in all the different labs and the dorms,” Schmidt recalls. “There was something in the air that made you think – something that made you dream,” he adds.
Schmidt (estimated net worth $16,2 billion) studied electrical engineering and computer science for his PhD in 1982, then went on to work for technology companies Sun Microsystems and Novell before being hired to head Google, where he was consultant from 2001 to 2011.
The man behind Garmin GPS, Min Kao ($4,2 billion), also studied electrical engineering at the University of Tennessee. So is Henry Samueli ($7,7 billion), who got his PhD from UCLA in 1980 and was a professor at the school when he co-founded semiconductor giant Broadcom in 1991 with a fellow student, Henry Nicholas III (6,6, XNUMX billion dollars).
A special exception
Peggy Cherng ($2,5 billion) has a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Missouri and worked in software engineering for McDonnell Douglas and 3M, but built her fortune co-founding the fast food chain Panda Express with her husband in the 1980s.
“While I may not be using the specific content of my PhD,” says Cherng – whose thesis involved developing a computer program to screen for congenital heart disease – “the critical thinking and analytical skills I've gained have been invaluable in every aspect of my subsequent course", he emphasizes characteristically.
"A PhD opens doors but doesn't define your success," he adds.
From 2 to 5
Both David Shaw ($7,9 billion) and David Siegel ($6,8 billion) made their Wall Street fortunes on the back of a doctorate in computer science, which is the second most popular, with six graduates in total.
Other computer scientists include Charles Simonyi ($5,2 billion), a Microsoft employee who was largely credited with creating Word and Excel, and James Clark ($2,9 billion), the who founded the Netscape website.
Additionally, biology tied for second place with six billionaires, including Apple chairman Art Levinson ($1,3 billion), who spent decades at the biotech company Genentech and has written more than 80 scientific articles, and Timothy Springer ( $2,1 billion), a professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology at Harvard and is the vaccine company's first investor Covid-19 Modern.
Chemistry follows in fourth place with at least five PhDs, including Li Ge ($5,6 billion) and Ning Zhao ($1,2 billion), US citizens living in China who studied at Columbia University before open a pharmaceutical company based in Shanghai.
Physics completes the top five, with at least three PhDs.
Other fields
It is not, however, necessary to have one of these five degrees to become rich. Cliff Asness ($1,6 billion) studied finance, writing a thesis on “variables that explain stock returns” – then built his fortune as an investor.
Scott Smith ($1 billion), who founded the cloud computing company Qualtrics with his two sons, holds a Ph.D. in "marketing, quantitative methods and social psychology".
Then there's Jeffrey Lurie ($4,4 billion), who got rich from his family's movie business but got his doctorate in social policy from Brandeis University.
Source: ot.gr