1971-

American Computer Programmer and Inventor

Acomputer programming genius, at the age of 22 Marc Andreessen helped lay the foundation for the Internet and World Wide Web. His Mosaic was the first browser to come into general use. He followed it up with the commercially successful Netscape browser, which brought millions of people onto the Internet and created one of the most successful initial public offerings (IPOs) in Wall Street history.

Andreessen was born in Cedar Falls, Iowa, in July 1971, and was raised in the small town of New Lisbon, Wisconsin. His father Lowell was a seed salesman and his mother Pat worked at the mail-order clothing company Lands' End. As a child Andreessen was fascinated by the potential of personal computers. At age 8 he first showcased his genius for the technology by teaching himself the Basic programming language out of a book he had borrowed from...