Famous Engineers Without Degrees
Engineers are known for their hard work and dedication to their craft. But the truth is, not all engineers got their degrees. Here are some of history’s most famous engineers who didn’t finish school:
Thomas Edison: Inventor of the light bulb and phonograph, Edison was expelled from school when he was 10 years old. He said later that his mother refused to send him back after he “took apart” a doll and put it back together using glue and kite string.
Nikola Tesla: Known for developing alternating current electricity, Tesla left school at age 15 because his family couldn’t afford to keep him in school any longer. He worked as an electrician until he became a professor at the University of Prague where he met Thomas Edison and formed a friendship with him that would last until Edison died in 1931.
Walt Disney: Walt Disney dropped out of high school at age 16 and worked at a local newspaper as an artist before moving home to Kansas City where he worked as an advertising illustrator for the Kansas City Star newspaper while taking night classes at the Chicago Art Institute and Art Students League of New York while working on cartoons in his spare time.
Famous Engineers Without Degrees
Introduction
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Elon Musk
Elon Musk is a South African-born Canadian-American business magnate, engineer, and investor. He is the founder, CEO, and lead designer of SpaceX; co-founder, CEO, and product architect of Tesla Inc.; co-founder and CEO of Neuralink; founder of The Boring Company; co-founder of PayPal; co-founder and former chairman of SolarCity; co-founder of Zip2; and founder of X.com which merged with Confinity and took the name PayPal.
Musk attended Queen’s University before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania where he received an economics degree from its Wharton School as well as a bachelor’s degree in physics from its College of Arts & Sciences.[31][32]
David Karp (founder of Tumblr)
David Karp, the founder of Tumblr, dropped out of high school at 15. He was a computer programmer and freelance web developer before he founded the microblogging site in 2007. His interest in computers started when he was young: In his spare time as a kid, he created websites for his family members.
In 2005, Karp interned for Fred Wilson at Flatiron Partners and worked as an entry-level software engineer for eight months. He also worked as a consultant for The New York Times during this period.
Larry Ellison – Co-Founder of Oracle Corp
Larry Ellison was born in New York City in 1944 and raised in Chicago. He dropped out of college to become a programmer for the Ampex Corporation, a company that produces video recorders. In 1977, he cofounded Oracle Corporation with Robert Miner and Edward Oates.
In 1979, Larry Ellison and his partners started developing the first database management system (DBMS) for the mainframe computers used by large businesses at that time. A DBMS is software with an integrated set of tools used to manage large databases and organize information on computer systems.
Oracle became one of the most successful companies in history by selling its products through licensing agreements with third-party companies instead of directly selling them to customers. Larry Ellison has been named as one of America’s wealthiest individuals on multiple occasions; he currently holds titles like CEO Emeritus at Oracle Corporation as well as founder/chairman/chief technology officer at Lawrence J Alexander Company LLC., which is named after him!
John Mackey – Co-Founder of Whole Foods
John Mackey is the co-founder of Whole Foods, a chain of natural and organic supermarkets. He started his career as a vegetarian and became a vegan in the 1970s. He is also known for being an outspoken advocate of organic and natural foods, while being critical of factory farming methods.
Mackey has been awarded three honorary doctorates: Doctorate in Business Administration from St. Mary’s University (2009); Doctorate of Humane Letters from University of North Texas; Doctorate in Humanities from Unity University
Richard Branson – Founder of Virgin Group
You may have heard of Richard Branson. He’s a businessman and investor, as well as the founder of the Virgin Group. Born in 1950, he is a British citizen who was born in Surrey. He is a self-made billionaire and chairman of Virgin Group.
Henry Ford – Founder of Ford Motor Company
Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American industrialist and the founder of the Ford Motor Company. As an engineer and inventor, he played a significant role in the development of mass production methods for manufacturing cars.
Halsey Minor (founder CNET and Salesforce.com)
Halsey Minor is the founder of CNET and Salesforce.com, as well as a number of other successful ventures. He started his career as an engineer at IBM, but left to found CNET (a technology news site) in 1994. In 1999, he founded Salesforce.com—now one of the biggest CRM software companies in the world.
In addition to being an entrepreneur, Halsey Minor is also a philanthropist who supports organizations like The California Academy of Sciences and The Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI).
Rachael Ray (celebrity chef, writer, television personality)
Rachael Ray is the host of the popular program 30 Minute Meals and is a celebrity chef, writer and television personality. She attended The University at Albany where she received a degree in communications. She did not complete her studies at The Culinary Institute of America or Johnson and Wales University where she earned culinary arts degrees because she was offered a job at Hallmark Cards after graduation in 1993.
Thomas Edison – Inventor, businessman and founder of General Electric (GE)
Thomas Edison is a household name. By the time he was 27, he had already invented a device for measuring the speed of electricity. By the time he was 30, he had designed an improved stock ticker and patented it in 1869. From that point on, pretty much everything else was gravy for this guy:
Inventor of Electric Incandescent Light Bulb (1879)
Inventor of Phonograph (1877)
Inventor of Motion Picture Camera (1888)
Many famous people who have been successful in their field have not had a degree.
You may be familiar with the idea that some people are just better at things than others. These people have the ability to succeed in whatever they choose to do, whether it’s a career or hobby. One of the most common examples is being great at sports. It’s rare that you’ll find someone who didn’t get a degree in sports and yet is still able to play at an elite level (unless they are one of those athletes born into money).
It turns out that this phenomenon also applies outside of sports. Many highly successful people have not received degrees from college or university, including Sir Richard Branson, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg! Other examples include Albert Einstein (who got three Nobel prizes for his work in physics), John D Rockefeller (the founder of Standard Oil Company) and Steve Jobs (the co-founder of Apple Computer).
Conclusion
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