Mark Shuttleworth
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Mark_Shuttleworth_NASA.jpg
Mark Shuttleworth (born 18 September 1973 in Welkom, Free State) is a South African entrepreneur. As an early space tourist, he was the first AfricanTemplate:Ref in space.
Mark Shuttleworth obtained a Business Science degree in Finance and Information Systems at the University of Cape Town.
In 1995, he founded Thawte, which specialised in digital certificates and internet security. He sold Thawte in 1999 to VeriSign, and subsequently formed HBD Venture Capital, a business incubator and venture capital provider, and the Shuttleworth Foundation, a non-profit organisation dedicated to social innovation which also funds educational projects in South Africa.
Shuttleworth gained worldwide fame on 25 April 2002 as a civilian cosmonaut aboard the Russian Soyuz TM-34 mission, paying approximately US$ 20 million. Two days later, the Soyuz spacecraft arrived at the International Space Station, where he spent eight days, participating in experiments related to AIDS and genome research. On 5 May, he returned to Earth. In order to participate on the flight, Shuttleworth had to undergo one year of training and preparation, including seven months which he spent in Star City, Moscow.
He participated as a Debian developer since the early 1990s, and in 2004 he returned to the GNU/Linux world by funding the development of Ubuntu Linux, a user-friendly version of Linux, through his company Canonical Ltd.
Mark Shuttleworth currently lives in London.
Footnote
- Template:Note Shuttleworth claimed to be the first African in space, but some point out that Patrick Baudry — a French astronaut who was in space before Shuttleworth — was born in Cameroon. Others point out, however, that Baudry has always been a French citizen and that Cameroon was still a French colony at the time of his birth.
See also
- List of astronauts by name
- List of South Africans - Voted 18th in the Top 100 Great South Africans
External links
- Mark Shuttleworth's Homepage (http://www.markshuttleworth.com/)
- Collaborative interview of Mark Shuttleworth (http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/04/1859255&tid=90&tid=163&tid=160&tid=11) at Slashdot, April 4, 2005
- Interview of Mark Shuttleworth (http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1774372754) at Computerworld, April 28, 2005
- The Shuttleworth Foundation (http://www.tsf.org.za/)
- HBD Venture Capital (http://www.hbd.com/)
- Ubuntu Linux (http://www.ubuntulinux.org/)de:Mark Shuttleworth
es:Mark Shuttleworth it:Mark Shuttleworth pl:Mark Shuttleworth fr:Mark Shuttleworth