Charles Simonyi

Charles Simonyi (; Hungarian: Simonyi Károly, pronounced [ˈʃimoɲi ˈkaːroj]; born September 10, 1948) is a Hungarian-American software architect, businessman, and space tourist. He led the development of Microsoft's first application software, including early versions of Microsoft Office, and later co-founded Intentional Software, a company focused on his concept of intentional programming. A former researcher at Xerox PARC, he helped pioneer graphical user interfaces and introduced object-oriented programming and Hungarian notation to Microsoft. Simonyi flew to space twice as a private citizen, becoming the fifth space tourist and the only one to pay for two separate trips to the International Space Station. As of January 2025, his net worth was estimated at US$7.5 billion.

Simonyi was born in Budapest, Hungary. His father, Károly Simonyi, was a Kossuth Prize-winning professor of electrical engineering at the Technical University of Budapest, and created the first Hungarian nuclear particle accelerator. While in secondary school he worked part-time as a night watchman at a computer laboratory in the early 1960s, overseeing a large Soviet Ural II mainframe. He took an interest in computing and learned to program from one of the laboratory's engineers. By the time he left school, he had learned to develop compilers and sold one of these to a government department. He presented a demonstration of his compiler to the members of a Danish computer trade delegation. In 2006 he said that when he was young his dream was, "to get out of Hungary, go to the West and be free."

Simonyi's early career and interests are described in the book Programmers at Work, a collection of interviews published by Microsoft Press.

At the age of 17, Simonyi left Hungary on a short-term visa but did not return. He was hired by Denmark's A/S Regnecentralen in 1966 where he worked with Per Brinch Hansen and Peter Kraft on the RC 4000 minicomputer's Real-time Control System, and with Peter Naur on the GIER ALGOL compiler.

He subsequently moved from Denmark to the United States in 1968 to attend the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned his BS in Engineering Mathematics & Statistics in 1972 under Butler Lampson. He has honorary doctorate degrees from the Juilliard School in New York and from the University of Pécs in Hungary.

Simonyi was recruited to Xerox PARC by Butler Lampson during its most productive period, working alongside Lampson, Alan Kay and Robert Metcalfe on the development of the Xerox Alto, one of the first personal computers. He and Lampson developed Bravo, the first WYSIWYG document preparation program, which became operational in 1974. During this time he received his PhD in computer science from Stanford University in 1977 with a dissertation on a software project management technique he called meta-programming. This approach sought to defeat Brooks' law by scaling programming through a formalization of communication among programmers. In the 1992 book Accidental Empires (ISBN 0-88730-855-4), Robert X. Cringely gave this description:

Simonyi became a United States citizen in 1982. He was in a long-term relationship with businesswoman Martha Stewart, which lasted 15 years and ended in 2008. Later that year, on November 22, he married Lisa Persdotter, the daughter of a Swedish businessman, in a private ceremony in Gothenburg, Sweden, attended by close friends including Bill Gates. The couple has two daughters.

Simonyi resides in Medina, Washington, in a modern home known as Villa Simonyi, designed by architect Wendell Lovett and featuring a collection of works by Roy Lichtenstein and Victor Vasarely. He formerly spent part of each year aboard his 233-foot (71 m) yacht Skat, which he sold in 2021. As of 2023, he owns a 295-foot (90 m) yacht named NORN, designed by Espen Oeino and registered in the Cayman Islands.

In early 2006, Simonyi expressed interest in becoming a space tourist and signed agreements with the space tourism company, Space Adventures, Ltd., for a ten-day mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

In August 2006, he passed a pre-qualification medical exam by the Russian Federal Space Agency, called the State Medical Commission (GMK). He started training at Star City in September 2006.

He launched on April 7, 2007 (GMT), on board Soyuz TMA-10. He shared a ride with two Russian cosmonauts to the International Space Station, and returned aboard Soyuz TMA-9, landing on April 21, 2007.

Upon arrival to the ISS on April 9, 2007, Simonyi said, "It is amazing how it appears from the blackness of the sky. It was very, very dramatic. It was like a big stage set, a fantastic production of some incredible opera or modern play. That's what I was referring to when I said I was blown away."

Simonyi's expected return on April 20, 2007, was delayed by one day due to 'boggy ground'. He returned to Earth on April 21, 2007 along with an American astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut.

Simonyi was portrayed by actor Brian Lester in the TV film Pirates of Silicon Valley.