Early Life:
Mark Zuckerberg was born on May 14, 1984, in White Plains, New York, to Karen and Edward Zuckerberg. He grew up with three sisters in a Reform Jewish household in Dobbs Ferry, New York. His great-grandparents were Jewish emigrants from Austria, Germany, and Poland.
Education:
Zuckerberg attended Ardsley High School before transferring to Phillips Exeter Academy, where he was captain of the fencing team. He started using computers and writing software in middle school.
High School Software Development:
During high school, Zuckerberg developed a program that allowed computers between his house and his father's dental office to communicate. He also built a music player called the Synapse Media Player that used machine learning to learn the user's listening habits.
College Years at Harvard:
By the time Zuckerberg started classes at Harvard in 2002, he had gained a reputation as a programming prodigy. He studied psychology and computer science, belonged to Alpha Epsilon Pi and Kirkland House.
Notable College Projects:
CourseMatch:
In his sophomore year, Zuckerberg created a program called CourseMatch, which helped users make class selection decisions based on the choices of other students and form study groups.
Zuckerberg later created a program called Facemash, where users could select the best-looking person from a choice of photos. It caused controversy as it used pictures from "Face Books," which included names and photos of students living in the dorms. The site was shut down by Harvard due to overwhelming popularity and complaints about the use of photos without permission.
