Lawrence Joseph ‘Larry’ Ellison is an American businessman, best known as the co-founder and CEO of multi-billion dollar software company, ‘Oracle Corporation’. He was born in New York City to an unmarried teen mother of Jewish heritage. He developed pneumonia when he was 9 months old, which is why his mother gave him to her aunt and uncle for adoption.He was a university dropout who was highly inclined towards the newly developing computer design system and in pursuit of success moved to California from Chicago.He started out by developing databases for CIA and quickly escalated to the idea of forming his own company, after developing the database ‘Oracle’. He co-founded ‘Software Development Laboratories’, which later came to be known as ‘Oracle Corporation’, with an initial investment of $2000.The company grew in the software market progressively since its foundation and with a fortune of about $ 52 billion Ellison is the third richest man in America.
It is inspiring to note how a person with such a difficult childhood and youth, who was abandoned by his biological mother, never knew his biological father and was raised by an adoptive father who was distant and critical of him, achieved such great heights in life.Ellison is a man who achieved brilliance against all odds because of his courage, talent, strong ideas and hard work.
Ellison has been married 4 times. His first marriage was with Adda Quinn (1967-74); second to Nancy Wheeler Jenkins (1977-78), then to Barbara Boothe (1983-86) and had two children: David and Megan, and fourth to Melanie Craft (2003-2010).
