Mark Shuttleworth
July 15, 2011
Intellectual Property News and Interesting Facts
Image source: www.markshuttleworth.com
Mark Shuttleworth was born in Welkom, South Africa in 1973 and studied Business Science at the University of Cape Town.
He started an internet security company named Thawte in his parents garage in Cape Town and in 1995 Mark Shuttleworth founded Thawte Consulting – a company specializing in digital certificates and cryptography.
Mark Shuttleworth sold Thawte Consulting to VeriSign Inc. in 1999 for R3.5 billion and became the richest person in South Africa. He gave every member of his staff a R1 million bonus!
In 2001 Mark Shuttleworth began his 8 months preparation course for the Space mission in Star City, Russia. He also had to learn Russian so that he could read the dials in the spacecraft.
In April 2002, at the age of 28, he flew in space as a cosmonaut crew member of the Soyuz mission TM34 to the International Space Station. He was the second self-funded space tourist and the first ever African in space.
The 3-day space trip cost Mark Shuttleworth $20 million.
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One Response to “Mark Shuttleworth”
i have a registered SA patent and PCT application filed for my invention and would like to speak to the relevant person(s) in the Foundation about this who deal with intellectual property. Please supply me with the contact details for this.
My family knows Mark Shuttleworth personally and I would really appreciate help in this regard.
By kitty van Rijswijk on Jan 20, 2012