Hungarian-American software developer Charles Simonyi, father of Microsoft Word and Excel, developer of goal-oriented programming, and the world’s fifth-largest space tourist, turns 75 on September 10.
Born in 1948 in Budapest. His father, Karoly Simoni, is a Kosuth Prize-winning engineer and physicist, and builder of the first particle accelerator in galactic nuclear physics. The cultural history of physics He was the world-famous author and it is not surprising that he was also interested in technical sciences, primarily in its infancy space research and computer technology. He was only in high school when he took a night shift job in the control room of the Soviet Ural-2 electronic tube computer. Given his interest, an engineer also taught him how to program the machine, and soon after he wrote his own translation program and even sold one of his programs to a government company. He graduated in 1966 and signed a one-year contract in Denmark as a programmer with a company called Regnecentralen, then stayed abroad. (His father was expelled from the university for this reason).
In 1968, he went to the United States: where he obtained a degree in engineering mathematics and statistics from the University of California at Berkeley, and in 1977 he obtained a doctorate in computer science from Stanford University, and in his thesis he discussed his grand plan, metaprogramming.
In 1972, he got a job at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and co-created Bravo, the first so-called “integer format” (WYSIWYG) text editor. Bravo, which was completed in 1974 and is considered the prototype for Microsoft Word, ran on the Alto, a personal computer also developed by Xerox.
In 1981, he met Bill Gates and joined Microsoft as a senior developer, obtaining US citizenship the following year.
During his two decades at Microsoft, as part of the Microsoft Office suite, the word editor and Excel spreadsheets were developed under his leadership, as well as its predecessor Multiplant.
In order to make development work more efficient, he introduced a new type of object-oriented programming method, which he further improved by introducing Hungarian notation, a programming notation system that has since become standard, and named after its origin. Incidentally, this is where he built his fortune, which is now estimated at $5.2 billion.
In 2002, not surprisingly, he separated from Microsoft and founded his own company, Intentional Software. The company was created to simplify programming using the language-independent software development method developed at Microsoft, Deliberate Programming. At the time, Microsoft did not see any imagination in transforming the method into a simple change, but it blessed the establishment of the company, and with the signed licensing agreement, it even obtained priority to purchase the new company and its developments. Microsoft eventually purchased Intentional Software in 2017 to boost the development of its software, including the Office 365 suite.
An aviation lover since childhood, Charles Simone is an experienced pilot. He was one of the first to apply for the program to enable space travel for civilians, and in April 2007 he traveled into space as the world’s fifth space tourist and the second Hungarian. He arrived at the International Space Station aboard the Soyuz TMA-10 spacecraft, where he participated in amateur radio sessions and directed four research programs. (In the PILLE-ISS program, he measured his cosmic radiation exposure using the most successful galactic space instrument, the Pille dosimeter.) With his relaxed demeanor, he greatly softened the previously strict atmosphere typical of Russian space missions. He paid $25 million for the space flight. In the spring of 2009, he returned to the International Space Station for the second time. The first space tourist has so far spent only $35 million on his second trip.
He has received eleven patents and numerous awards.
In 2002 he received the George Washington Award from the Hungarian American Foundation, in 2006 he was awarded the Middle Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary, and in 2007 he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary. Republic of Hungary. In 2004, he was elected an external member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
He is a generous supporter of science and culture through his charitable activities. Between 2000 and 2012, he supported the work of prominent Hungarian scholars by establishing the Charles Simonyi Research Fellowship. He established three professorships at Oxford University, Stanford University, and the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. In 2005, he donated $25 million to the latter in memory of his father. In 2004, he established a $50 million charitable foundation to promote cultural, scientific and educational life in the Seattle area. In 2017, he contributed $5 million toward the construction of a new building for the Computer Science Department at the University of Washington.
Charles Simone dated Martha Stewart, the American TV star housewife, for fifteen years, before marrying Swedish millionaire Lisa Bersdotter, 32 years his junior, in 2008, and they have two daughters. Their family residence in Medina, Washington, houses a collection of paintings by Roy Lichtenstein and Victor Vasarely. In 2021, Simone sold his custom-built 71-metre superyacht, where he had previously spent half the year. Recently, he made headlines after purchasing a 90-meter luxury yacht.
Opening photo: Charles Simonyi in Bagkonur, before going into space on April 7, 2007. Photograph: Maxime Marmur/AFP
