Technology and Business Magnate. At the time of his death, he was one of the most well-known and respected business entrepreneurs in the world. He was the co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer (CEO) of Apple, Inc. He is considered a visionary genius in the field of computers and held 342 U.S. patents relating to computer technology. Born in San Francisco to Abdulfattah "John" Jandali, a Syrian national, and Joanne Carole Schieble, an American of German ancestry, who had met in graduate school. His mother was a speech-language pathologist, while his father taught political science at several colleges. When Schieble's father opposed her marriage, the baby was given up for adoption to Paul and Clara Jobs. Four months after Schieble's father died, the couple married in December 1955, ten months after they had given up their baby. They would have a daughter, Mona Jandali Simpson, in 1957, but divorced in 1962. Steven Jobs eventually met his sister Mona in 1984. Steve Jobs attended Homestead High School in Cupertino, California, where he was raised. While in high school, he worked one summer for the Hewlett-Packard (HP) Company in Palo Alto, California, with Steve Wozniak. He spent one semester at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, and in 1974 took a job with Atari, Inc., saving his money for a spiritual retreat to India. He then traveled to India in search of spiritual enlightenment, returning to the US converted to Buddhism, and experienced LSD. Returning to Atari, he was tasked with creating a circuit board for the game "Breakout," which his friend Wozniak designed for him. In 1976, Wozniak, Jobs, and Ronald Wayne founded Apple, Inc., to make computers. In the late 1970s, he teamed with Wozniak, Mike Markkula, and others to design, develop, and market one of the first commercially successful personal computers, the Apple. Jobs was one of the first to see the potential of Xerox's mouse-driven graphical interface, and he urged its adoption to create the Apple Lisa, and a year later, the Macintosh, becoming the first commercially successful small computer with a graphical user interface. In 1985, Jobs was removed by CEO John Sculley as manager of the Macintosh Division, and he resigned five months later to found NeXT, Inc, a computer manufacturing company in competition with Apple and Microsoft. The next few years were difficult for both Jobs and NeXT. Although the NeXT computers were technically advanced, they were very expensive and beyond the reach of most computer buyers. In 1996, NeXT was acquired by Apple, and their computer activities were absorbed into Apple. In 1986 Jobs founded Pixar Animation Studios with Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith, created in part by his purchase of The Graphics Group, a company that used computer generated graphics to make movies, which led to the term CGI (for Computer Generated Image) to enter the lexicon of the English language. Pixar's first movie was "Toy Story" (1995) on which Jobs served as an executive producer. Over the next decade, Pixar produced a number of popular movies, including: "A Bug's Life" (1998), "Monsters, Inc." (2001), "Finding Nemo" (2003), "The Incredibles" (2004), "Cars" (2006), "Ratatouille" (2007), "WALL·E" (2008) and three sequels to "Toy Story". Pixar earned four Academy Awards for Best Animated Feature, a new Oscar category created in 2001. When Jobs renegotiated Pixar's contract with The Walt Disney Company, resulting in Disney purchasing Pixar, he received seven percent of the Disney stock, making him one of the richest men in the United States. When Apple absorbed NeXT computers in 1996, Steve Jobs returned to Apple, and in September 1997 he was named CEO of Apple Computers. Under Jobs' guidance, the company increased sales with the introduction of its iMac, the Apple Store, and other new products, branching out and creating new digital applications, such as iTunes, the iPhone, the iPod and the iPad. In 2006, he introduced the concept of recycling old Apple manufactured computers and electronic equipment, making the company more environmentally friendly. In January 2011, Jobs went on medical leave, announcing that he was focusing on his health; he had been diagnosed and treated for pancreatic cancer since 2004. In August 2011, he resigned as CEO of Apple, remaining as the company chairman of the board, and in October he died at his California home due to complications of a relapse of his pancreatic cancer. Near the time of his death, he was estimated to have a net worth of $8.3 billion, making him one of the top 50 richest Americans. He was listed as either the primary or co-inventor of 342 U.S. patents, all dealing with computer technologies.