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Sergey Mikhailovich Brin (russian: link=no, Сергей Михайлович Брин; born August 21, 1973) is an American
business magnate A business magnate, also known as a tycoon, is a person who has achieved immense wealth through the ownership of multiple lines of enterprise. The term characteristically refers to a powerful entrepreneur or investor who controls, through perso ...
,
computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...
, and internet entrepreneur, who co-founded
Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
with
Larry Page Lawrence Edward Page (born March 26, 1973) is an American business magnate, computer scientist and internet entrepreneur. He is best known for co-founding Google with Sergey Brin. Page was the chief executive officer of Google from 1997 unt ...
. Brin was the president of Google's parent company,
Alphabet Inc. Alphabet Inc. is an American multinational technology conglomerate holding company headquartered in Mountain View, California. It was created through a restructuring of Google on October 2, 2015, and became the parent company of Google and sev ...
, until stepping down from the role on December 3, 2019. He and Page remain at Alphabet as co-founders, controlling shareholders, board members, and employees. As of November 2022, Brin is the 12th-richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of $78.0 billion. Brin immigrated to the United States with his family from the Soviet Union at the age of six. He earned his bachelor's degree at the
University of Maryland, College Park The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of Mary ...
, following in his father's and grandfather's footsteps by studying mathematics, as well as computer science. After graduation, he enrolled in
Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
to acquire a PhD in computer science. There he met Page, with whom he built a
web search engine A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...
. The program became popular at Stanford, and they suspended their PhD studies to start up Google in
Susan Wojcicki Susan Diane Wojcicki ( ; born July 5, 1968) is a Polish-American business executive who is the CEO of YouTube. Her net worth was estimated at $765 million in 2022. Wojcicki has worked in the technology industry for over 20 years. She became invol ...
's garage in Menlo Park.


Early life and education

Brin was born on August 21, 1973, in Moscow in the
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
, to
Russian Jewish The history of the Jews in Russia and areas historically connected with it goes back at least 1,500 years. Jews in Russia have historically constituted a large religious and ethnic diaspora; the Russian Empire at one time hosted the largest pop ...
parents, Mikhail and Eugenia Brin, both graduates of
Moscow State University M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU; russian: Московский государственный университет имени М. В. Ломоносова) is a public research university in Moscow, Russia and the most prestigious ...
(MSU). His father is a retired mathematics professor at the
University of Maryland The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of M ...
, and his mother a researcher at
NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...
's
Goddard Space Flight Center The Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is a major NASA space research laboratory located approximately northeast of Washington, D.C. in Greenbelt, Maryland, United States. Established on May 1, 1959 as NASA's first space flight center, GSFC empl ...
. The Brin family lived in a three-room apartment in central Moscow, which they also shared with Sergey's paternal grandmother. In 1977, after his father returned from a mathematics conference in
Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...
, Poland, Mikhail Brin announced that it was time for the family to emigrate. They formally applied for their
exit visa A visa (from the Latin ''charta visa'', meaning "paper that has been seen") is a conditional authorization granted by a polity to a foreigner that allows them to enter, remain within, or leave its territory. Visas typically include limits on t ...
in September 1978, and as a result, his father was "promptly fired". For related reasons, his mother had to leave her job. For the next eight months, without any steady income, they were forced to take on temporary jobs as they waited, afraid their request would be denied as it was for many
refuseniks Refusenik (russian: отказник, otkaznik, ; alternatively spelt refusnik) was an unofficial term for individuals—typically, but not exclusively, Soviet Jews—who were denied permission to emigrate, primarily to Israel, by the authori ...
. In May 1979, they were granted their official exit visas and were allowed to leave the country. The Brin family lived in
Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...
and Paris while Mikhail Brin secured a teaching position at the
University of Maryland The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of M ...
with help from
Anatole Katok Anatoly Borisovich Katok (russian: Анатолий Борисович Каток; August 9, 1944 – April 30, 2018) was an American mathematician with Russian-Jewish origins. Katok was the director of the Center for Dynamics and Geometry at the ...
. During this time, the Brin family received support and assistance from the
Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society HIAS (founded as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) is a Jewish American nonprofit organization that provides humanitarian aid and assistance to refugees. It was originally established in 1881 to aid Jewish refugees. In 1975, the State Departm ...
. They arrived in the United States on October 25, 1979. Brin attended elementary school at Paint Branch
Montessori School The Montessori method of education involves children's natural interests and activities rather than formal teaching methods. A Montessori classroom places an emphasis on hands-on learning and developing real-world skills. It emphasizes indepen ...
in
Adelphi, Maryland Adelphi is an unincorporated area and census-designated place in Prince George's County, Maryland, United States. Per the 2020 Census, the population was 16,823. Adelphi includes the following subdivisions; Adelphi, Adelphi Park, Adelphi Hills, Ad ...
, but he received further education at home; his father, a professor in the department of mathematics at the
University of Maryland The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of M ...
, encouraged him to learn mathematics and his family helped him retain his Russian-language skills. He attended Eleanor Roosevelt High School, Maryland. In September 1990, Brin enrolled in the
University of Maryland The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of M ...
, where he received his Bachelor of Science from the Department of Computer Science in 1993 with honors in computer science and mathematics at the age of 19. In 1993, he interned at
Wolfram Research Wolfram Research, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational company that creates computational technology. Wolfram's flagship product is the technical computing program Wolfram Mathematica, first released on June 23, 1988. Other products include Wo ...
, the developers of
Mathematica Wolfram Mathematica is a software system with built-in libraries for several areas of technical computing that allow machine learning, statistics, symbolic computation, data manipulation, network analysis, time series analysis, NLP, optimizat ...
. Brin began his graduate study in computer science at
Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
on a graduate fellowship from the
National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...
, receiving a M.S. in computer science in 1995. , he was on leave from his PhD studies at Stanford.


Search engine development

During an orientation for new students at Stanford, he met
Larry Page Lawrence Edward Page (born March 26, 1973) is an American business magnate, computer scientist and internet entrepreneur. He is best known for co-founding Google with Sergey Brin. Page was the chief executive officer of Google from 1997 unt ...
. The two men seemed to disagree on most subjects, but after spending time together they "became intellectual soul-mates and close friends." Brin's focus was on developing data mining systems while Page's was in extending "the concept of inferring the importance of a research paper from its
citation A citation is a reference to a source. More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated alphanumeric expression embedded in the body of an intellectual work that denotes an entry in the bibliographic references section of the work for the purpose of ...
s in other papers". Together, they authored a paper titled "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale
Hypertext Hypertext is E-text, text displayed on a computer display or other electronic devices with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access. Hypertext documents are interconnected by hyperlinks, which are typi ...
ual Web Search Engine". To convert the backlink data gathered by BackRub's
web crawler A Web crawler, sometimes called a spider or spiderbot and often shortened to crawler, is an Internet bot that systematically browses the World Wide Web and that is typically operated by search engines for the purpose of Web indexing (''web spid ...
into a measure of importance for a given web page, Brin and Page developed the PageRank algorithm, and realized that it could be used to build a
search engine A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...
far superior to those existing at the time. The new algorithm relied on a new kind of technology that analyzed the relevance of the
backlink A backlink is a link from some other website (the referrer) to that web resource (the referent). A ''web resource'' may be (for example) a website, web page, or web directory. A backlink is a reference comparable to a citation. The quantity, q ...
s that connected one Web page to another, and allowed the number of links and their rank, to determine the rank of the page.Moschovitis Group. ''The Internet: A Historical Encyclopedia'', ABC-CLIO, 2005. Combining their ideas, they began utilizing Page's dormitory room as a machine laboratory, and extracted spare parts from inexpensive computers to create a device that they used to connect the nascent search engine with Stanford's broadband campus network. After filling Page's room with equipment, they then converted Brin's dorm room into an office and programming center, where they tested their new search engine designs on the web. The rapid growth of their project caused Stanford's computing infrastructure to experience problems. Page and Brin used the former's basic
HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...
programming skills to set up a simple search page for users, as they did not have a web page developer to create anything visually elaborate. They also began using any computer part they could find to assemble the necessary computing power to handle searches by multiple users. As their search engine grew in popularity among Stanford users, it required additional servers to process the queries. In August 1996, the initial version of Google was made available on the Stanford Web site. By early 1997, the BackRub page described the state as follows: ::Some Rough Statistics (from August 29, 1996) ::Total indexable HTML urls: 75.2306 Million ::Total content downloaded: 207.022 gigabytes ::... ::BackRub is written in Java and Python and runs on several Sun Ultras and Intel Pentiums running
Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...
. The primary database is kept on a
Sun Ultra series The Sun Ultra series is a discontinued line of workstation and server computers developed and sold by Sun Microsystems, comprising two distinct generations. The original line was introduced in 1995 and discontinued in 2001. This generation wa ...
II with 28GB of disk. Scott Hassan and Alan Steremberg have provided a great deal of very talented implementation help. Sergey Brin has also been very involved and deserves many thanks. :::- Larry Page BackRub already exhibited the rudimentary functions and characteristics of a search engine: a query input was entered and it provided a list of backlinks ranked by importance. Page recalled: "We realized that we had a querying tool. It gave you a good overall ranking of pages and ordering of follow-up pages." Page said that in mid-1998 they finally realized the further potential of their project: "Pretty soon, we had 10,000 searches a day. And we figured, maybe this is really real." Some compared Page and Brin's vision to the impact of
Johannes Gutenberg Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg (; – 3 February 1468) was a German inventor and Artisan, craftsman who introduced letterpress printing to Europe with his movable type, movable-type printing press. Though not the first of its ki ...
, the inventor of modern printing: The comparison was also noted by the authors of ''The Google Story'': "Not since Gutenberg... has any new invention empowered individuals, and transformed access to information, as profoundly as Google."
Vise, David David A. Vise (born June 16, 1960), is a journalist and author. He is a Senior Advisor to New Mountain Capital, a New York-based investment firm, and Executive Director of Modern States “Freshman Year for Free,” a philanthropy whose goal is t ...
, and Malseed, Mark. ''
The Google Story ''The Google Story'' is a book by David Vise and Mark Malseed that takes an in-depth look at the founding of Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, ...
'', Delta Publ. (2006)
Also, not long after the two "cooked up their new engine for web searches, they began thinking about information that was at the time beyond the web," such as digitizing books and expanding health information.


Other interests

In June 2008, Brin invested $4.5 million in
Space Adventures Space Adventures, Inc. is an American space tourism company founded in 1998 by Eric C. Anderson. Its offerings include zero-gravity atmospheric flights, orbital spaceflights (with the option to participate in a spacewalk), and other spacefl ...
, the
Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...
-based
space tourism Space tourism is human space travel for recreational purposes. There are several different types of space tourism, including orbital, suborbital and lunar space tourism. During the period from 2001 to 2009, seven space tourists made eight s ...
company. Brin and Page jointly own a customized
Boeing 767-200 The Boeing 767 is an American wide-body aircraft developed and manufactured by Boeing Commercial Airplanes. The aircraft was launched as the 7X7 program on July 14, 1978, the prototype first flew on September 26, 1981, and it was certified on ...
and a
Dassault/Dornier Alpha Jet The Dassault/Dornier Alpha Jet is a light attack jet and advanced jet trainer co-manufactured by Dassault Aviation of France and Dornier Flugzeugwerke of Germany. It was developed specifically to perform trainer and light attack missions, a ...
, and pay $1.3 million a year to house them and two
Gulfstream V The Gulfstream V (Model GV, pronounced "G-five") is a long-range, large business jet aircraft produced by Gulfstream Aerospace, derived from the previous Gulfstream IV. It flies up to , up to and has a range. It typically accommodates four cr ...
jets owned by Google executives at
Moffett Federal Airfield Moffett Federal Airfield , also known as Moffett Field, is a joint civil-military airport located in an unincorporated part of Santa Clara County, California, United States, between northern Mountain View and northern Sunnyvale. On November 10, ...
. The aircraft have had scientific equipment installed by
NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...
to allow experimental data to be collected in flight.


Personal life

Brin was raised Jewish, but is not religious. In May 2007, Brin married biotech analyst and entrepreneur
Anne Wojcicki Anne E. Wojcicki ( ; born July 28, 1973) is an American entrepreneur who co-founded and serves as CEO of the personal genomics company 23andMe. She founded the company in 2006 with Linda Avey and Paul Cusenza to provide the general public access t ...
in
the Bahamas The Bahamas (), officially the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, is an island country within the Lucayan Archipelago of the West Indies in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic. It takes up 97% of the Lucayan Archipelago's land area and is home to ...
. They had a son in late 2008 and a daughter in late 2011. In August 2013, it was announced that Brin and his wife were living separately after Brin had an extramarital affair with
Google Glass Google Glass, or simply Glass, is a brand of smart glasses developed and sold by Google. It was developed by X (previously Google X), with the mission of producing an ubiquitous computer. Google Glass displays information to the wearer using ...
's marketing director Amanda Rosenberg. In June 2015, Brin and Wojcicki finalized their divorce. On November 7, 2018, he married Nicole Shanahan, a legal tech founder. They have a daughter, born in late 2018. Brin and Shanahan separated on December 15, 2021, and Brin filed for divorce on January 4, 2022. Brin's mother, Eugenia, has been diagnosed with
Parkinson's disease Parkinson's disease (PD), or simply Parkinson's, is a long-term degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that mainly affects the motor system. The symptoms usually emerge slowly, and as the disease worsens, non-motor symptoms becom ...
. In 2008, he decided to make a donation to the
University of Maryland School of Medicine The University of Maryland School of Medicine (abbreviated UMSOM), located in Baltimore City, Maryland, U.S., is the medical school of the University of Maryland, Baltimore and is affiliated with the University of Maryland Medical Center and Me ...
, where his mother has received treatment. According to ''Forbes'', Brin has donated over $1 billion to fund research of the disease. Brin and Wojcicki, although divorced, still jointly run The Brin Wojcicki Foundation. They have donated extensively to
The Michael J. Fox Foundation The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research is dedicated to finding a cure for Parkinson's disease (PD) established in 2000 by Michael J. Fox. It concentrates on funding research and ensuring the development of improved therapies for ...
and in 2009 gave $1 million to support the
Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society HIAS (founded as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) is a Jewish American nonprofit organization that provides humanitarian aid and assistance to refugees. It was originally established in 1881 to aid Jewish refugees. In 1975, the State Departm ...
. Brin is a donor to
Democratic Party Democratic Party most often refers to: *Democratic Party (United States) Democratic Party and similar terms may also refer to: Active parties Africa *Botswana Democratic Party *Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea *Gabonese Democratic Party *Demo ...
candidates and organizations, having donated $5,000 to
Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...
's reelection campaign and $30,800 to the DNC. According to CNBC, Brin became interested in blockchain technology after building a gaming computer with his son to mine
Ethereum Ethereum is a decentralized, open-source blockchain with smart contract functionality. Ether (Abbreviation: ETH; sign: Ξ) is the native cryptocurrency of the platform. Among cryptocurrencies, ether is second only to bitcoin in market capita ...
.


Awards and accolades


2002–2009

*In 2002, Brin, along with Larry Page, was named in the
MIT Technology Review ''MIT Technology Review'' is a bimonthly magazine wholly owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and editorially independent of the university. It was founded in 1899 as ''The Technology Review'', and was re-launched without "The" in ...
TR100 The Innovators Under 35 is a peer-reviewed annual award and listicle published by ''MIT Technology Review'' magazine, naming the world's top 35 innovators under the age of 35. at ''Technology Review'' with lists of winners at technologyreview.com ...
, as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35. *In 2003, both Brin and Page received an honorary MBA from
IE Business School IE Business School is a graduate and undergraduate school of business, located in Madrid, Spain, European Union, Europe. It was founded in 1973 under the name Instituto de Empresa and since 2009 is part of IE University. IE Business School runs ...
"for embodying the entrepreneurial spirit and lending momentum to the creation of new businesses...". *In 2003, Brin and Page were both Award Recipients and National Finalists for the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award *In 2004, they received the
Marconi Foundation The Guglielmo Marconi International Fellowship Foundation, briefly called Marconi Foundation and currently known as The Marconi Society, was established by Gioia Marconi Braga in 1974 to commemorate the centennial of the birth (April 24, 1874) of h ...
Prize, the "Highest Award in Engineering", and were elected Fellows of the Marconi Foundation at
Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
. "In announcing their selection, John Jay Iselin, the Foundation's president, congratulated the two men for their invention that has fundamentally changed the way information is retrieved today." *In 2004, Brin received the
American Academy of Achievement The American Academy of Achievement, colloquially known as the Academy of Achievement, is a non-profit educational organization that recognizes some of the highest achieving individuals in diverse fields and gives them the opportunity to meet o ...
's Golden Plate Award with Larry Page at a ceremony in Chicago, Illinois.


2009–present

*In November 2009, ''
Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also re ...
'' named Brin and Page the fifth most powerful people in the world. *Earlier that same year, in February, Brin was inducted into the
National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy ...
, which is "among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer ... ndhonors those who have made outstanding contributions to engineering research, practice...". He was selected specifically, "for leadership in development of rapid indexing and retrieval of relevant information from the World Wide Web". *In their "Profiles" of Fellows, the
National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...
included a number of earlier awards: *As of October 2022, Brin is the 8th-richest person in the world according to ''Forbes'', with an estimated net worth of $83.8 billion.


Appearances in film


References


External links


Sergey Brin
on
Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also re ...
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Brin, Sergey 1973 births 21st-century American inventors Alphabet Inc. people American billionaires American computer businesspeople American computer programmers American computer scientists American people of Russian-Jewish descent American technology chief executives American technology company founders Naturalized citizens of the United States Business duos Businesspeople from Maryland Businesspeople from the San Francisco Bay Area Businesspeople in information technology Businesspeople in software Directors of Alphabet Inc. Google employees Internet pioneers Jewish American philanthropists Jewish American scientists Life extensionists Living people Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering People from Greenbelt, Maryland People from Adelphi, Maryland Soviet emigrants to the United States Soviet Jews Stanford University School of Engineering alumni University of Maryland, College Park alumni Web developers World Economic Forum Young Global Leaders 21st-century American Jews