Charles Simonyi

Born in Budapest, Hungary in 1948, Charles Simonyi is a pioneer of computer software design. After developing Bravo, the first WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) text editor at Xerox's PARC lab, he went on to serve as Mircosoft's chief software architect, at a time when the company was still young, leading teams that designed popular software packages such as Microsoft Word and Excel. He went on to co-found the Charles and Lisa Simonyi Fund for Arts and Sciences, which furnishes arts, science and education grants, and is an avid space tourist. Updated 2010