Charles Simonyi: software pioneer, aviator, and space tourist

By William Atkins
Friday, 23 March 2007 21:13

Science - Space

Simonyi was born in Budapest, Hungary on September 10, 1948. He became a Junior Astronaut in Hungary at the age of 13 years. After learning about computers as a night watchman in a computer laboratory and selling a compiler to a government agency before graduating high school, Simonyi moved to the United States in 1968. He earned his degree in engineering mathematics from the University of California at Berkeley.

He then completed his master’s degree and Ph.D. degree from Stanford University (Stanford, California). Simonyi gained valuable computer experience while working for Xerox Corporation’s research and development division, the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). He created the first WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) text editor called Bravo.

Simonyi is an accomplished pilot, with over 2,000 hours of flying time in jets and helicopters.

While with Xerox, Simonyi applied directly to Bill Gates, who at the time was starting up a fledgling software company that you may know of today at Microsoft Corporation. He was responsible for developing such software products as the word processing program Microsoft Word and the spreadsheet Microsoft Excel.

He left Microsoft in 2002 to co-found Intentional Software Corporation, baed in Bellevue, Washington, a software engineering company that markets intentional programming concepts. The company’s goal is to improve the way that organizations write software.

Simony is scheduled to launch on April 7, 2007 aboard the Russian Soyuz TMA-10, which is heading for the International Space Station (ISS) as part of the Expedition 15 mission. He has paid Space Adventures, a space travel agency, about $25 million for the space trip to the ISS, and for months of training at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia.

You can follow Simonyi’s travels in space by going to: http://www.charlesinspace.com/.

Additional information about the ISS Expedition 15 mission is found at the ITwire article “Next International Space Station crew is Expedition 15” at http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/10707/1066/.

Additional information about Intentional Software Corporation is found at: http://www.intentsoft.com/company/management.html.

Information about the space tourist agency Space Adventures, headquartered in Vienna, Virginia, is found at: http://www.spaceadventures.com/.