Quicknation    Jeff Bezos

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Jeff Bezos (born January 12, 1964Jeff Bezos is the president, chief executive officer, and chairman of the board of Amazon.com. Bezos, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Princeton University, worked as a financial analyst for D.E. Shaw before founding Amazon.com in 1994. He was

Jeffrey P. Bezos was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His mother's ancestors were early settlers in Texas, and over the generations had acquired a 250,000 acre (100 km² or 62 miles²) ranch in Cotulla. Jeffrey's maternal grandfather was a regional director of the Atomic Energy Commission in Albuquerque. He retired early to the ranch, where Jeffrey spent most summers of his youth, working with his grandfather at the enormously varied tasks essential to the operation. At an early age, he displayed a striking mechanical aptitude. Even as a toddler, he asserted himself by dismantling his crib with a screwdriver.

Jeffrey was born when his mother was still in her teens, and her marriage to his father lasted little more than a year. She remarried when Jeffrey was five. Jeffrey's stepfather, Mike Bezos, was born in Cuba. He escaped to the United States alone at age 15, and worked his way through the University of Albuquerque. When he married Jeffrey's mother, the family moved to Houston, Texas, and Mike Bezos became an engineer for Exxon. Jeff attended River Oaks Elementary in Houston from the 4th to 6th grades.

Jeffrey showed intense and varied scientific interests at an early age. He rigged an electric alarm to keep his younger siblings out of his room and converted his parents' garage into a laboratory for his science projects. The family moved to Miami, Florida, where Jeffrey attended Miami Palmetto Senior High School [1]. In high school, Jeffrey fell in love with computers and was valedictorian of his class. He entered Princeton University planning to study physics, but soon returned to his love of computers, and graduated with a degree in computer science and electrical engineering.

After graduation, Jeff Bezos found employment on Wall Street, where computer science was increasingly in demand to study market trends. He went to work at Fitel, a start-up company that was building a network to conduct international trade. He stayed in the finance realm with Bankers Trust, rising to a Vice Presidency.

At D. E. Shaw, a firm specializing in the application of computer science to the stock market, Bezos was hired as much for his overall talent as for any particular assignment. While working at Shaw, Jeff met his wife, MacKenzie, also a Princeton graduate. He rose quickly at Shaw, becoming a senior vice president, and looked forward to a bright career in finance, when he made a discovery that changed his life, and the course of business history.

By 1994, the World Wide Web had begun to be known outside the narrow circles of computer science researchers and physicists, but there was no Web commerce to speak of. One day that spring, Jeffrey Bezos observed that Web usage was increasing by 2,300 percent a year. He saw an opportunity for a new sphere of commerce, and immediately began considering the possibilities.