Michael Bloomberg

His father kept the books for a dairy company and never made more than 6,000 dollars in a year. The family moved from Allston to Brookline to Medford, where the son made Eagle Scout at 12 and finished high school in 1960. At Johns Hopkins he meant to read physics until he found out it required German, switched to electrical engineering, joined a fraternity, and built the costume for the university's blue jay mascot. His father died suddenly while he was still in college. He took the engineering degree in 1964, a Harvard MBA in 1966, and a job at Salomon Brothers the same year for 9,000 dollars. He was a general partner by 1972, running equity trading and then the systems that supported it.

Phibro bought Salomon in 1981, the new management fired him, and he walked out with 10 million dollars for his equity. He put it into Innovative Market Systems, betting that Wall Street would pay for market data delivered instantly. The Market Master terminal shipped in December 1982, the firm took his name in 1986, and he ran it as chief executive from 1981 to 2001 and again from 2014 to 2023. He was sworn in as mayor of New York on January 1, 2002, having turned Republican to win the office, took a second term in 2005 by the widest margin any Republican had managed there, and a third after the city council voted 29 to 22 to change the term limit. Indoor smoking went in 2003, trans fat in 2006, and a cap on soda sizes died in court.

His police department expanded stop-and-frisk sixfold in documented stops. A federal court held that the way the city ran it violated the Fourth Amendment and encouraged racial profiling. His administration appealed, his successor dropped the appeal, and in November 2019, days before he announced for president, he apologized. After September 11 the NYPD ran a surveillance program on Muslim New Yorkers by religion, ethnicity and language, with help from the CIA, and shut it down in 2014. Bloomberg L.P. was sued four times by female employees for sexual harassment, and a booklet of his sayings that colleagues printed for his 48th birthday in 1990 contains lines his staff later told the New York Times he regrets. He spent more than a billion dollars of his own money on four months of campaigning in 2020 and won American Samoa.

He gave Johns Hopkins five dollars in 1965. By 2024 he had given the university more than 4.55 billion, including 1.8 billion in 2018 to make admission need-blind and a billion in 2024 to make the medical school free for families under 300,000 dollars a year. Lifetime giving reached 24.5 billion by 2025, the largest of any American donor that year for the third year running. He signed the Giving Pledge in 2010 and has been a United Nations climate envoy since 2014. In March 2026 Forbes put him 18th in the world at 109.4 billion dollars. He is 84 and the argument over what all of it bought is nowhere near finished.

Michael Bloomberg's life against the full span of the corpus — the fading end marks a life still in progress.

• Bloomberg L.P. company
  Founded as Innovative Market Systems and renamed in 1986 1981
• The Bloomberg Terminal invention
  Shipped as the Market Master in December 1982 1982
• Bloomberg News company
  One of several products built on top of the terminal business —
• New York City indoor smoking ban law
  Extended to every bar and restaurant in the city 2003
• New York City trans fat ban law
  The first citywide ban in the United States, in force from 2008 2006
• Bloomberg by Bloomberg book
  His account of the firing and what he did with the money 1997

• February 14, 1942 aged 0 Born in Boston to a dairy company bookkeeper His father never earned more than 6,000 dollars a year.
• 1964 aged ~22 Takes an electrical engineering degree at Johns Hopkins He had meant to read physics until he learned it required German.
• 1966 aged ~24 Hired at Salomon Brothers for 9,000 dollars a year He was a general partner six years later.
• 1981 aged ~39 Fired after Phibro buys Salomon, and paid 10 million dollars He put all of it into a data company.
• December 1982 aged 40 The first terminal reaches the market
• January 1, 2002 aged 59 Sworn in as mayor of New York City He had been a Democrat all his life and switched parties to run.
• October 2008 aged 66 The city council votes 29 to 22 to allow a third term
• November 2019 aged 77 Apologizes for stop-and-frisk, then announces for president He entered the race on November 24.
• March 4, 2020 aged 78 Quits the race after winning American Samoa and endorses Joe Biden The four months cost him more than a billion dollars.

• Donald Trump b. 1946
  Businessman, media personality, and 45th and 47th president whose populist movement transformed American politics. opposed
• Joe Biden b. 1942
  46th president who enacted major infrastructure and climate legislation after decades in the Senate and vice presidency. endorsed
• Bill Gates b. 1955
  Co-founder of Microsoft who, through the Gates Foundation, has donated billions to global health and education. co-signer of the Giving Pledge
• Warren Buffett b. 1930
  Value investor whose disciplined approach built one of the largest personal fortunes in American history. co-signer of the Giving Pledge
• Robert Moses 1888–1981
  Master builder whose roads, parks, and public works reshaped metropolitan New York while displacing communities and entrenching car dependence. earlier remaker of the city
• Andrew Carnegie 1835–1919
  Steel magnate who built one of the largest steel empires in history and later became a major philanthropist. the model for giving it away