Elon Musk
Founder of SpaceX and chief executive of Tesla
Born 1971
Photo: Gage Skidmore · CC BY-SA 4.0
«When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favour.»
Elon Musk founded SpaceX, which made rocket boosters that land and fly again, and led Tesla as electric cars moved from curiosity to mass market. He is among the most influential and most argued-about figures in technology.
Key achievements
- Founded SpaceX in 2002, first private company to reach orbit
- Led Tesla to mass-market electric cars
Universities
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Took bachelor's degrees in physics and in economics from the Wharton School, graduating in 1997.
Stanford, California (next to Palo Alto)
Enrolled for a PhD in materials science in 1995 and left after two days to start an internet company.
Facts
- As a student he and a friend rented a large house and ran it as a nightclub at weekends to cover the rent.
- He wrote and sold a space-themed video game called Blastar at twelve for around five hundred dollars.
- SpaceX landed an orbital rocket booster upright for the first time in December 2015, something many engineers had called impractical.
Photographs
Photographs come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences; the author and licence are shown on each image.