Dr. Schmidt obtained a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from Princeton University and an MS in 1979 and a PhD in 1982 in EECS from the University of California, Berkeley. He was joint author of lex, a lexical parser and an important tool for compiler construction.

Dr. Schmidt also teaches at Stanford University as a part time professor of business.

Born:	April 27 1955 (1955-04-27) (age 52)
Occupation:	Chief Executive Officer of Google Inc Board of Directors of Apple Inc.
Net worth:	$6.2 billion USD2006) (
Website:	Google Inc. Profile

Career

Schmidt was a member of the research staff at the Computer Science Lab at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and held positions at Bell Laboratories and Zilog. In 1983, Schmidt joined Sun Microsystems as software manager. At Sun he led the development of Java, Sun's platform-independent programming technology, and defined Sun's Internet software strategy. He later became chief technology officer and corporate executive officer. From 1997 to 2001, Schmidt was CEO of Novell.

Schmidt left Novell after the acquisition of Cambridge Technology Partners. Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin (with the assistance of executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles, Inc.) recruited Eric Schmidt to run their company in 2001 under the influence of venture capitalists John Doerr and Michael Moritz.

Schmidt joined Google's board of directors as chairman in March 2001 and became the company's CEO in August 2001. At Google, Schmidt shares responsibility for Google's daily operations with founders Page and Brin. As indicated by page 29 of Google's 2004 S-1 Filing, Schmidt, Page, and Brin run Google as a triumvirate. Schmidt possesses the legal responsibilities typically assigned to the CEO of a public company and focuses on management of the vice presidents and the sales organization.

According to Google's website, Schmidt also focuses on "building the corporate infrastructure needed to maintain Google's rapid growth as a company and on ensuring that quality remains high while product development cycle times are kept to a minimum.''

Schmidt is one of the few people who have become a billionaire (USD) based on stock options received as an employee in a corporation of which neither he nor a relative was the founder. "Earlier this year, he pulled in almost $90 million from sales of Google stock and made at least another $50 million selling shares in the past two months as the stock leaped to more than $300 a share." In its 2006 'World's Richest People' list, Forbes ranked Schmidt as the 129th richest person in the world (the ranking was shared by Onsi Sawiris, Alexei Kuzmichov, and Robert Rowling) with an estimated wealth of $6.2billion.

Schmidt was selected to Apple's board of directors on August 28, 2006.

In 2007, he was cited by PC World as #1 on the list of the 50 Most Important People on the Web, along with Google co-Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

Trivia

• Schmidt has visited Burning Man.
• He is a hobbyist aviator.
• Schmidt gave $100,000 to the Democratic National Committee in 2000, $25,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2004, as well as maximum $2,000 contributions to 2004 Democratic presidential candidates Senators John Kerry and Joe Lieberman, Gov. Howard Dean and Representative Richard Gephardt.
• Earned a salary of $1 in 2006 with a holiday bonus of $1,723.