Dictionary of Computers - Clark, Jim

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

US computer scientist and entrepreneur who founded three billion-dollar companies – Netscape Communications Corporation in 1994, the Internet-based Healtheon/Web MD Corporation in 1996, and Silicon Graphics Inc. in 1982. Chair of myCFO, started in 1999 to provide financial management solutions, he is the author of Netscape Time: the Making of the Billion-Dollar Start-Up that took on Microsoft (1999), chronicling Netscape's role in the rise of the Internet.

Clark revolutionized 3-D computing through Silicon Graphics, having developed the initial technology while a professor at Stanford University 1978–82. He resigned from Silicon Graphics in 1994 to co-found Netscape with Mark Andreessen, a programmer from the University of Illinois. After creating the first Internet browser programme (NCSA Mosaic), and attracting a loyal following by giving the product away free to desktop users, they established the Navigator browser and the server software (which they sold) as the standard for Internet application. Clark's Netscape led the technological revolution that popularized the Internet, and he took it public in 1995 before selling it to AOL in 1999 for an estimated $4 billion. His most recent ventures are myCFO and Shutterfly.com, which transforms digital photographs into 35mm prints.

Clark was born in Plainview, Texas. Although he dropped out of high school at the age of 17 to join the Navy, he completed a high school equivalency diploma to attend the University of New Orleans and graduated with a BS and a masters in physics in 1971. He completed his PhD in computer science at the University of Utah in 1974. Dissatisfied with a teaching post at the University of Santa Cruz and a brief spell of consultancy work at Boeing, he returned to academia in 1978 as an associate professor at Stanford University, California. There he, and a team of graduate students, developed the initial technology upon which Silicon Graphics' first products were to be built. He left Stanford to start up the company in 1982. His future clients were to include Hollywood film companies, creating special effects for blockbuster films such as Jurassic Park and Toy Story.

After co-founding Netscape in 1994, in 1996 Clark launched Internet-based Healtheon, connecting doctors, hospitals, pharmacies, and insurance companies, allowing them to share medical information and to streamline costs. When Healtheon merged with Web MD in 1999, it faced competition and press criticism, and Clark left the company in October 2000 (although the press had reported earlier in the year that he was to make a new investment in the company). He started myCFO in 1999 to simplify his own complex finances and to provide financial management for other wealthy individuals.

Through a $150 million grant to Stanford University, Clark has attached his name to a centre for biomedical engineering and sciences. He has also written software for a high-tech yacht, and spends his spare time sailing his own boats, Hyperion and Athena.

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