What's The Most Popular PhD Among Billionaires? (2024)

Plenty of billionaires never went to college. Some, like Mark Zuckerberg, are famous for dropping out. But at least 35 U.S. billionaires hit the books hard back in the day, spending years in school obtaining a Ph.D. before going on to build or bolster fortunes in the world of business.

Long before he became the CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt helped develop an early internet network and met his future wife Wendy while hitting the Greek Theatre and “wandering up and down Telegraph [Avenue]” as a Ph.D. student at U.C. Berkeley. “It felt like a new world was being imagined right here on campus, in all the different labs and workshops and dorms,” Schmidt recalled in a 2012 commencement address. “There was something in the air that made you think—something that made you dream.”

Schmidt (estimated net worth: $16.2 billion) studied electrical engineering and computer science for his doctorate in 1982, when the computer was named Time’s “person of the year,” then went to work for tech firms Sun Microsystems and Novell before being recruited to lead Google, where he was chief executive from 2001 to 2011.

The man behind the Garmin GPS, Min Kao ($4.2 billion), also studied electrical engineering, for a Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee. So did Henry Samueli ($7.7 billion), who got his doctorate from UCLA in 1980 and was a professor at the school when he cofounded semiconductor giant Broadcom in 1991 with one of his electrical engineering Ph.D. students, Henry Nicholas III ($6.6 billion).

In all, at least nine American billionaires got an engineering Ph.D., the most popular degree among high-dollar doctorates. Another 26 got their advanced degree in something else, ranging from STEM fields like biology and chemistry to operations research, marketing and social policy. These billionaires, who account for less than 5% of the 735 Americans on Forbes’ 2023 list, are worth a collective $165 billion. Many made big bucks from their specialized knowledge, while others found great wealth in completely different domains.

Peggy Cherng ($2.5 billion) has a doctorate in electrical engineering from the University of Missouri and worked in software engineering for McDonnell Douglas and 3M, but struck gold by cofounding the Panda Express fast food chain with her husband in the 1980s. “While I may not be using the specific content of my research,” says Cherng–whose thesis involved developing a computer program to test for congenital heart disease–“the critical thinking and analytical skills I gained have been an asset in every aspect of who I am today.”

Both David Shaw ($7.9 billion) and David Siegel ($6.8 billion) made their billions on Wall Street, armed with Ph.D.s in computer science, which ties as the second most popular billionaire doctorate, with six graduates. Other computer scientists include Charles Simonyi ($5.2 billion), an early Microsoft employee largely credited with creating the Word and Excel programs, and James Clark ($2.9 billion), who cofounded the Netscape web browser.

Also with six: Biology, whose students include Apple chairman Art Levinson ($1.3 billion), a Princeton biochemical sciences Ph.D. who spent decades at biotech firm Genentech and has written more than 80 scientific articles, and Timothy Springer ($2.1 billion), a professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology at Harvard, where he got his Ph.D in molecular biology and biochemistry. He was an early investor in Covid-19 vaccine maker Moderna.

Chemistry comes in fourth, with at least five Ph.D.s, including husband and wife Li Ge ($5.6 billion) and Ning Zhao ($1.2 billion), U.S. citizens who live in China, who studied at Columbia University before launching Shanghai-based pharmaceutical and healthcare manufacturing services firm WuXi AppTec. Physics rounds out the top five, with at least three Ph.D.s.

Not that you need to go into one of these five fields to strike it rich as a doctorate. Cliff Asness ($1.6 billion) studied finance, writing a thesis on “variables that explain stock returns”–then made a fortune as a quantitative investor. Scott Smith ($1 billion), who cofounded cloud computing company Qualtrics with his two sons, holds a Ph.D. in “marketing, quantitative methods and social psychology.”

Then there’s Jeffrey Lurie ($4.4 billion), who grew up around his family’s movie business but got his Ph.D. in social policy from Brandeis University. “It was a wonderful time of intellectual curiosity,” Lurie tells Forbes. “It appealed to me because you could look at the key structures that impact the quality of life for people, domestically and globally, and analyze whether we’re maximizing our policies to improve lives.”

His degree is not an obvious choice, given his current job: CEO and owner of the Philadelphia Eagles. But Lurie says he’s found his doctorate useful in running the NFL team, which requires coming up with winning policies for both on the field and off it as “a good corporate citizen.” As the team, which won Super Bowl LII in 2018 and lost Super Bowl LVII in February, prepared for this week’s NFL draft, Lurie said he would lean on “the rigorousness and the discipline for analysis” that his Ph.D. helped instill–skills he thinks could benefit many students considering a post-graduate degree. “It doesn't matter the area you study so much as your commitment to real analysis,” says Lurie. “Those skills come into play no matter what field you’re in.”

“A Ph.D. opens doors,” adds Panda Express cofounder Cherng, “but it does not define your success.”

Here are the most common Ph.D.s held by American billionaires:

^{NET WORTHS ARE AS OF} THE 2023 WORLD’s BILLIONAIRES LIST

1. Engineering

^{9 billionaires | Notable student:} Romesh T. Wadhwani ^{($5.1 billion), founder of software firm Symphony Technology Group. Electrical engineering, Carnegie Mellon ‘72.}

2 (tie). Computer science

^{6 billionaires | Notable student:} Benoit Dageville ^{($1 billion), cofounder of cloud-based database company Snowflake. Computer science, Paris IV - Jussieu ‘95.}

2 (tie). Biology

^{6 billionaires | Notable student:} Patrick Hanrahan ^{($1.5 billion), Stanford professor and cofounder of software firm Tableau. Biophysics, University of Wisconsin-Madison ‘85.}

4. Chemistry

^{5 billionaires | Notable student:} Frank Laukien ^{($2.7 billion), CEO of scientific instruments maker Bruker Corp. Chemical physics, Harvard ‘88.}

5. Physics

^{3 billionaires | Notable student:} H. Fisk Johnson III ^{($4.8 billion), chairman and CEO of SC Johnson. Physics, Cornell ‘86.}