Mark Elliot Zuckerberg was born in 1984 in White Plains, New York. Mark attended Ardsley High School before transferring to Phillips Exeter Academy in his junior year. As well as winning prizes for math, astronomy and physics, Mark also excelled at classical studies. 

Mark’s father, a dentist, taught his son Atari BASIC programming and even hired a private tutor to teach him further computer skills. Mark went on to develop an instant messenger program for the family's home dental practice. 

He then created a music player called Synapse Media Player that learnt the user's listening habits. Even though this attracted interest from Microsoft and AOL, Mark decided to enrol at Harvard University in September 2002. 

While studying psychology and computer science, Mark wrote various computer programs, one of which was called Facemash. The website allowed the user to vote on who was the most attractive student out of a choice of two photos. However, the site had to be shut down because its popularity overwhelmed Harvard’s network and student's said the use of their photos was 'completely improper.’

Mark then began work on a new project called The Facebook, a social network.

On 4 February 2004, Facebook launched from Mark's Harvard dormitory room. Although at first it was restricted to Harvard students only, the site expanded to include other schools including Stanford, Dartmouth, Columbia, New York University, Cornell, Penn, Brown and Yale.

Alongside roommate Dustin Moskovitz and some fellow developers, Mark moved the project to Palo Alto in June. That same month, Napster founder Sean Parker became the company's president. Mark soon met Peter Thiel, who became Facebook's first outside investor with a 10.2% stake for $500,000. By the end of the year, Facebook had one million users.

With an investment of $13m from Accel Partners in May 2005, rumours began to circulate that Facebook would be bought by a major corporation, much like News Corp's acquisition of MySpace. However, Mark later turned down offers from Yahoo! and MTV Networks to grow the company by granting access to other colleges, high schools and international educational institutions. He also opened up Facebook to outside developers and continued to add more features. 

Commenting on the suggestion of being acquired, Mark noted" "For me and my colleagues, the most important thing is that we create an open information flow for people. Having media corporations owned by conglomerates is just not an attractive idea to me."

Mark then faced a legal battle when three former Harvard students claimed Facebook was a stolen idea. Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra said they enlisted the help of Mark to build a similar social network called Harvard Connection, only for him to lose interest in the project and start work on Facebook. After lawyers searched Mark's computer for correspondence and records of Facebook's development, Instant Messages showed that Facebook did abscond intellectual property from Harvard Connection. The case was eventually settled in June 2008, with the threesome receiving $1.2m in Facebook shares.

Mark later seemed to suggest regret over the situation. "If you're going to go on to build a service that is influential and that a lot of people rely on, then you need to be mature, right?" he said. "I think I've grown and learned a lot."

In 2009, Facebook claimed that it had turned its cash flow positive for the first time with Mark commenting in a blog post: "This is important to us because it sets Facebook up to be a strong independent service for the long term." He also noted that Facebook was serving 300 million people across the world.

After reaching the 500 million-user mark in 2010, Mark was topped Vanity Fair magazine's 'most influential people of the Information Age.’ Later that year, a film about the beginnings of Facebook called The Social Network was released. Even though it received widespread critical acclaim, Mark said that the film was largely inaccurate despite some minor details being correct. "It's interesting what stuff they focused on getting right; like, every single shirt and fleece that I had in that movie is actually a shirt or fleece that I own," he said. "So there's all this stuff that they got wrong and a bunch of random details that they got right."

Following the death of Steve Jobs in 2011, Mark revealed that the Apple co-founder had advised him to build a management team that "focused on building as high quality and good things as you are." The same year Facebook partnered with Skype to add video chat.

In April 2012, Facebook acquired photo sharing service Instagram for $1bn with Mark saying: "Millions of people around the world love the Instagram app and the brand associated with it, and our goal is to help spread this app and brand to even more people."

The following month, Facebook went public with a share price of $38 each, valuing the company at $104bn. Despite this being the largest valuation for a newly listed public company, the share price only rose by $0.23 on the opening day, which was considered by analysts as a disappointment. Nevertheless, by the end of the year Facebook reached one billion active users. 

Mark met Priscilla Chan, a medical student, at a fraternity party during his sophomore year. The couple subsequently dated and Mark asked her to move into his Palo Alto house in 2010. He also studied Mandarin Chinese in preparation of their visit to China in December 2010. The couple married in Mark's backyard on 19 May 2012, which also marked Priscilla's graduation from medical school.

According to Mark's Facebook page, his interests are "openness, making things that help people connect and share what's important to them, revolutions, information flow, minimalism."

In September 2010, Mark donated $100m to revamp and renovate Newark's public school system. That same year along with Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, Mark signed The Giving Pledge, a campaign that would see him donate at least half of his wealth over the course of time to charity.

Mark voiced himself in an episode of The Simpsons where Lisa and Simpson meet him at an entrepreneurs' convention.

Since 2011, Mark has been a vegetarian.

1. Do you think there will come a time when you want to leave Facebook?

2. How do you respond to criticism over Facebook’s privacy policy?

3. How important to you is lobbying for immigration reform and changes to the US education system to improve technology teaching?

Mark's business interests are similar to his personal philosophy, with the bio section on his Facebook page stating:

"I'm trying to make the world a more open place."

He reaffirmed this ideology by noting:

"Our mission is to make the world more open and connected. We do this by giving people the power to share whatever they want and be connected to whoever they want, no matter where they are."

Although some describe Mark as aggressive, he encourages growth, innovation and collaboration. He is also considered to be a personable, approachable and laid-back leader. 

A memo written by Facebook engineer Andrew Bosworth revealed what it was like to work with Mark, saying that he expects debate, isn't sentimental, experiences things contextually and pushes people.

At the time of Facebook's IPO, Mark reiterated his stance on money by saying:

"Simply put: we don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services. And we think this is a good way to build something."

On getting overly committed to needless projects, Mark has said:

"I have this fear of getting locked into doing things that are not the most impactful things you can do."

1. Do you think there will come a time when you want to leave Facebook?

2. How do you respond to criticism over Facebook’s privacy policy?

3. How important to you is lobbying for immigration reform and changes to the US education system to improve technology teaching?

Andrew Bosworth, engineer, Facebook:

"I have been impressed with how much he prefers to be part of an on-going discussion about the product as opposed to being its dictator." 

David Newman, former private tutor:

"He was a prodigy. Sometimes it was tough to stay ahead of him." 

Terry Semel, former CEO, Yahoo!:

"I’d never met anyone—forget his age, 22 then or 26—I’d never met anyone who would walk away from a billion dollars." 

Priscilla Chan, wife:

On first impressions: "He was this nerdy guy who was just a little bit out there." 

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