Larry Ellison

Early life

Ellison was born on August 17, 1944, in New York City. His mother, Florence Spellman, is Jewish. His biological father was an Italian-American United States Army Air Corps pilot. After Ellison contracted pneumonia at the age of nine months, Spellman gave Ellison to Spellman's aunt and uncle for adoption. Ellison did not meet Spellman again until he was 48. Ellison moved with his adoptive parents to Chicago's South Shore, a middle-class neighborhood with a significant Jewish population. He remembers his adoptive mother, Lillian Spellman Ellison, as warm and loving. He found his adoptive father, Louis Ellison, to be austere, unsupportive, and often distant. A government employee who had made a small fortune in Chicago real estate, only to lose it during the Great Depression, Louis had chosen his last name to honor Ellis Island, his point of entry into the United States. Ellison was raised in a Reform Jewish home by his adoptive parents, who attended synagogue regularly, but he remained a religious skeptic. At age 13, Ellison refused to have a bar mitzvah celebration. Ellison said: "While I think I am religious in one sense, the particular dogmas of Judaism are not dogmas I subscribe to. I don't believe that they are real. They're interesting stories. They're interesting mythology, and I certainly respect people who believe these are literally true, but I don't. I see no evidence for this stuff." Ellison says that his fondness for Israel is not connected to religious sentiments but rather due to Israelis' innovative spirit in the technology sector. Ellison attended South Shore High School in Chicago, was admitted to the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and enrolled as a pre-med student. At the university, he was named science student of the year. He withdrew without taking final exams after his sophomore year because his adoptive mother had just died. After spending the summer of 1966 in California, he then attended the University of Chicago for one term, where he studied physics and mathematics and also first encountered computer design. He then moved to Berkeley, California, and began his career as a computer programmer for several different companies.

Career

Symonds, Matthew; Ellison, Larry (2004). Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-7432-2505-2. OCLC 52638805.

Yachts & assets

With the economic downturn of 2010, Ellison sold his share of Rising Sun, the 12th largest yacht in the world, making David Geffen the sole owner. The vessel is 453 feet (138 metres) long, and reportedly cost over $200 million to build. He downsized to Musashi, a 288-foot (88-metre) yacht built by Feadship.

Personal life

Ellison has been married six times:

Ellison married Adda Quinn in 1967. They divorced in 1974. Ellison married Nancy Wheeler Jenkins shortly after meeting her in late 1976. In 1978, they divorced and Wheeler sold back her shares in Oracle (SDL at the time) to Ellison for $500. Ellison was married to Barbara Boothe from 1983 to 1986. Boothe was a former receptionist at Oracle (RSI at the time). They had two children, David and Megan, who were (as of 2024) film producers at Skydance Media and Annapurna Pictures, respectively. On December 18, 2003, Ellison married Melanie Craft, a romance novelist, at his Woodside estate. Ellison's friend Steve Jobs, former CEO and co-founder of Apple Inc., was the official wedding photographer, and Representative Tom Lantos officiated. They divorced in 2010. In 2015, Ellison married Nikita Kahn. They separated in December 2016 and their divorce was finalized in 2020. As of 2024, Ellison was married to Jolin (Keren) Ellison (née Zhu), an alumna of the University of Michigan. They have four children.