Larry Ellison

Lawrence Joseph Ellison (born August 17, 1944) is the co-founder and CEO of Oracle Corporation, a major database software firm.

=Early life=

Ellison was born in Manhattan, New York, to Florence Spellman, a 19 year old unwed mother, who placed her nine-month old son for adoption. Distant relatives to Ellison, Lillian and Louis Ellison, took him into their home, a two bedroom apartment located in a modest lower middle class Jewish neighborhood in South Chicago. Ellison recalled to an interviewer, a warm and loving mother opposite to an austere and unsupportive father. At South Shore High School, he was a bright young man but an inattentive student. At 15, he began a long-term relationship that lasted for five years and ended sorely—depending on whom is asked, he unsuccessfully proposed marriage either once or twice. He lasted until the end of his sophomore year at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign but dropped out following Lillian s death. After a summer in Northern California, he returned home to study at the University of Chicago, but left after one semester. Ending his attempts to finish undergrad, he set out for California.

=Career=

During the 1970s, Ellison worked for the Ampex Corporation. One of his projects was a Database for the CIA, which he named Oracle .

Ellison was inspired by the paper written by Edgar F. Codd on relational database management system named A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks . He founded Oracle in 1977, putting up $2000 of his own money, under the name Software Development Laboratories . In 1979 the company was renamed Relational Software Inc. , later to be renamed Oracle after the flagship product Oracle database. He had heard about the International Business Machines System R database, also based on Codd s theories, and wanted Oracle to be compatible with it, but IBM stopped this by keeping the error codes for their DBMS secret. The initial release of Oracle was Oracle 2, even though there was no Oracle 1. The release number was intended to imply that all of the bugs had been worked out of an earlier version.

Ellison is reported to be one of the List of billionaires in America by Forbes. In 2005, Forbes reported that Ellison has a net worth of around $18.4 billion, making him the ninth richest man in the world. For a short period in 2000, Ellison was the richest man in the world.[http://news.com.com/Gates+loses+title+as+worlds+richest+man/2100-1001_3-239838.html]

At his [http://www.almanacnews.com/morgue/2002/2002_01_16.wslarry.html Woodside estate], Ellison married Melanie Craft, a romance novelist, on 18 December 2003. At the wedding, his friend, Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs, was the official photographer. Craft is Ellison s fourth wife. He has a son and a daughter by a previous wife.

=Properties=

==Sea==

Ellison is also the leader and principal financier of Oracle-BMW Racing, who competed to be challenger for the America s Cup in 2003 on behalf of the Golden Gate Yacht Club of San Francisco. Now named BMW Oracle Racing due to increased financial support from BMW, they are the official Challenger of Record for the 2007 America s Cup in Valencia, Spain.

Ellison won the disastrous 1998 Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race in his boat Sayonara . The storm that hit the race cost six other sailors their lives. This experience has caused Ellison to swear off ocean racing.

Ellison also has the fourth largest yacht (as of 2004) in the world named Rising Sun (yacht) which reportedly cost over US$200 million to construct. The Rising Sun is 452.75ft (138 m) long. (For comparison, the largest yacht is the Prince Abdul Aziz owned by the Saudi royal family, measuring 147.1m in length.)

==Air==

Ellison has had several run-ins with San Jose International Airport concerning the noise from his private jet. The San Jose, California has a limitation on late night takeoffs and landings on planes weighing more than 75,000 pounds (34 tonnes), and Ellison received several citations. In 2001, he was granted a personal waiver on the law.

==Home==

Ellison styled his Woodside, California estate after Medieval Japanese architecture.

==Sports==

Ellison has also attempted to purchase a professional sports franchise. He has offered to buy the Golden State Warriors and the San Francisco 49ers, only to be rebuffed both times. He is now pursuing ownership of a potential future franchise in Los Angeles, California, a market that the National Football League looks to expanding into.

=References=

*Leibovich, Mark. (October 30, 2000). The Outsider, His Business and His Billions . Washington Post , p.A01.

=External links=

*[http://www.oracle.com Oracle Official Site] *[http://www.oracle.com/corporate/lje_content.html Larry Ellison Oracle executive biography] *[http://www.forbes.com/finance/lists/54/2004/LIR.jhtmlpassListId=54&passYear=2004&passListType=Person&uniqueId=JKEX&datatype=Person Forbes 400 listing] *[http://www.orafaq.com/faqora.htm FAQ about Oracle Corporation]. This site contains some interesting factoids about Larry Ellison. *[http://www.powerandmotoryacht.com/megayachts/1104top100yachts/index1.html America s 100 Largest Superyachts] Information on the Rising Sun *[http://www.europaluxury.com/Section/Boats/LUERSSEN.html Rising Sun shipyard] *[http://www.ellisonfoundation.org/index.jsp The Ellison Medical Foundation]. *[http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgifile=/chronicle/archive/2004/01/14/MNGS649LVB1.DTL Zinko, C., et al. (2004). Larry Ellison s most important merger: Oracle CEO ties knot with novelist at Woodside estate; Steve Jobs takes wedding photos. Retrieved January 16, 2004.]