A Brief Profile of Eric Schmidt

Written by Phin Upham

Eric Schmidt was born in Washington D.C. in April of 1955. He was one of the three sons born to his family. His father worked for the US Treasury department under the Nixon administration, and his mother had a master’s degree in psychology.

Schmidt graduated from Yorktown High in Virginia with eight varsity letters for the sport of long-distance running. He began his college career as an architecture major in Princeton, but soon switched to electrical engineering in 1976. He stayed four years at the International House Berkeley, where he met the woman who would become his future wife. This was after he transferred to Berkeley to continue his masters in designing and implementing network linking.

He went on to earn a PHD in the field during 1982, having written a dissertation on how to manage distributed development of software.

Schmidt began his career in the field of IT. He worked for several prominent firms like Xerox and Bell Labs. He joined Sun in 1983, the company’s first full-time software engineer. At Sun, Schmidt was the target of two elaborate pranks for April Fools. The first saw his office completely reassembled in the middle of a pond, complete with working phone. A Volkswagen Beetle was reassembled in his office as part of the second prank.

He began his career with Google after meeting the founders Sergey Brin and Larry Paige. Their initial meeting went well, and the company was in need of an experienced executive at the time. Schmidt was the Google CEO for ten years before stepping down. He still works with Google, lobbying congress and making public appearances to raise awareness of the company’s activities.