Larry Ellison, the owner of Oracle, is one of the richest persons in the world today. He is a self made man. He was born to a 19-year-old unwed Jewish mother. He was brought up by his mother’s aunt and uncle in Chicago. It is said that Ellison did not learn the name of his mother until he was 48.

He was brought up in a humble two-bedroom apartment in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood. Ellison was never a good student. He went to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign but dropped out because of the death of his mother. Later he attended only one more term in the University where he fell in love with Computer Programming.

He started his career working for Ampex Corporation. He made a database for CIA which was called Oracle. Ellison drew inspiration from a paper on RDBMS by Edgar F. Codd. He founded Oracle in 1977 with a mere $2000. It was initially called Software Development Laboratories (SDL). He wanted Oracle to be compatible with IBM’s R database but IBM never permitted it. He released Oracle 2. He fought bitter business battles with Informix Software and Sybase for supremacy.

Oracle also got over near bankruptcy in 1990 due to its marketing strategy. Despite all problems Oracle proved its supremacy in 1997. Ellison was also appointed on the Board of Directors of Apple. In his long career Ellison has amassed huge wealth. With assets estimated at $18.4 billion he is one of the richest men in the world. He is famous for his extravagant life style.