Sergey Brin 125
Education in the United States
Brin attended grade school at Paint Branch Montessori School in Adelphi, Maryland, but he received further
education at home; his father, a professor in the department of mathematics at the University of Maryland, nurtured
his interest in mathematics and his family helped him retain his Russian-language skills. In September 1990, after
having attended Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt, Maryland, Brin enrolled in the University of Maryland
to study computer science and mathematics, where he received his Bachelor of Science in May 1993 with honors.[14]
Brin began his graduate study in computer science at Stanford University on a graduate fellowship from the National
Science Foundation. In 1993, he interned at Wolfram Research, makers of Mathematica.[14] He is on leave from his
Ph.D. studies at Stanford.[15]Search engine development
During an orientation for new students at Stanford, he met Larry Page. In a recent interview for The Economist, Brin
jokingly said: "We're both kind of obnoxious." They seemed to disagree on most subjects. But after spending time
together, they "became intellectual soul-mates and close friends". Brin's focus was on developing data mining
systems while Page's was in extending "the concept of inferring the importance of a research paper from its citations
in other papers."[6] Together, the pair authored what is widely considered their seminal contribution, a paper entitled
"The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine."[16]
Combining their ideas, they "crammed their dormitory room with cheap computers" and tested their new search
engine designs on the web. Their project grew quickly enough "to cause problems for Stanford's computing
infrastructure." But they realized they had succeeded in creating a superior engine for searching the web and
suspended their PhD studies to work more on their system.[6]
As Mark Malseed wrote, "Soliciting funds from faculty members, family and friends, Sergey and Larry scraped
together enough to buy some servers and rent that famous garage in Menlo Park. ... [soon after], Sun Microsystems
co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim wrote a $100,000 check to “Google, Inc.” The only problem was, “Google, Inc.” did
not yet exist—the company hadn’t yet been incorporated. For two weeks, as they handled the paperwork, the young
men had nowhere to deposit the money."[11]
The Economist magazine describes Brin's approach to life, like Page's, as based on a vision summed up by Google's
motto, "of making all the world's information 'universally accessible and useful.'" Others have compared their vision
to the impact of Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of modern printing:
"In 1440, Johannes Gutenberg introduced Europe to the mechanical printing press, printing Bibles for mass
consumption. The technology allowed for books and manuscripts – originally replicated by hand – to be
printed at a much faster rate, thus spreading knowledge and helping to usher in the European Renaissance...
Google has done a similar job."[17]
The comparison was likewise noted by the authors of The Google Story: "Not since Gutenberg... has any new
invention empowered individuals, and transformed access to information, as profoundly as Google."[10]:1
Not long after the two "cooked up their new engine for web searches, they began thinking about information that is
today beyond the web", such as digitizing books, and expanding health information.[6]Personal life
In May 2007, Brin married Anne Wojcicki in The Bahamas. Wojcicki is a biotech analyst and a 1996 graduate of
Yale University with a B.S. in biology.[2][18] She has an active interest in health information, and together she and
Brin are developing new ways to improve access to it. As part of their efforts, they have brainstormed with leading
researchers about the human genome project. "Brin instinctively regards genetics as a database and computing
problem. So does his wife, who co-founded the firm, 23andMe", which lets people analyze and compare their own