Nathan Myhrvold

Early life and education

Myhrvold was born in Seattle, Washington. He attended Mirman School, and Santa Monica High School, graduating in 1974, and began college at age 14. He studied mathematics, geophysics, and space physics at UCLA (BSc, Masters). He was awarded a Hertz Foundation Fellowship for graduate study and studied at Princeton University, where he earned a master's degree in mathematical economics and completed a PhD in theoretical and mathematical physics. He also attended Santa Monica College. For one year, he held a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Cambridge working under Stephen Hawking (along with a number of other students).

Early career

Myhrvold left Cambridge to co-found a computer startup in Oakland, California. The company, Dynamical Systems Research Inc., sought to produce Mondrian, a clone of IBM's TopView multitasking environment for DOS. Microsoft purchased DSR in 1986 for $1.5M. Myhrvold worked at Microsoft for 13 years. At Microsoft he founded Microsoft Research in 1991.

Intellectual ventures

After Microsoft, in 2000 Myhrvold co-founded Intellectual Ventures, a patent portfolio developer and broker in the areas of technology and energy, which has acquired over 30,000 patents. Myhrvold allegedly owns approximately 40% of Intellectual Ventures Management Company, generating $20M-$40M annually in "management fees" for Myhrvold. Intellectual Ventures exploits the market for inventions and patents, buying patents from inventors under the assumption the patents will be more valuable in the future. IV also files patents through the work of a team of on-site inventors and thousands of other inventors within their network who respond to IV-created "Requests for Invention", although nothing from these labs has reached commercial use. It also buys patents from companies and inventors. In certain, limited, circumstances, IV reduces these inventions to practice. However, in most cases, IV's "inventions" are limited to the descriptions cited in their patent applications. IV then licenses the patents in patent-portfolios (bundles). IV purports to be assisting in the creation of a market for patent-backed securities.

The business practices of Intellectual Ventures have caused controversy and the company has been widely criticized for being a patent troll. Myhrvold has publicly defended his firm's practices, arguing that they foster innovation by serving as a marketplace for intellectual property. He noted in 2012 that many of the largest companies in Silicon Valley, including Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook, have also bought large patent portfolios to 'further their strategic game'.

Nuclear power

TerraPower, a subsidiary of Intellectual Ventures, aims to develop a nuclear reactor that is "safe and cheap" as part of Bill Gates' strategy to reach the goal of zero carbon emissions globally by 2050. Gates unveiled this plan at the TED 2010. The plant will run on natural or depleted uranium with the potential for 30 years without refuelling.

Science

Myhrvold is a prize-winning nature and wildlife photographer and a member of the USA Science and engineering Festival's Advisory Board. He has also been involved with paleontological research on expeditions with the Museum of the Rockies. His work has appeared in scientific journals including Science, Nature, Paleobiology (With Philip J. Currie), PLOS ONE, and the Physical Review, as well as Fortune, Time, Scientific American, National Geographic Traveler, and Slate. He and Peter Rinearson helped Bill Gates write The Road Ahead, a book about the future that reached No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list in 1995 and 1996. Myhrvold has contributed $1 million to the nonprofit SETI Institute in Mountain View, CA, for the development of the Allen Telescope Array, which was envisioned to be the most powerful instrument for SETI.

After the Science Museum in London successfully built the computing section of Charles Babbage's Difference Engine #2 in 1991, Myhrvold funded the construction of the output section, which performs both printing and stereotyping of calculated results. He also commissioned the construction of a second complete Difference Engine #2 for himself, which was on display at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, from May 10, 2008 to January 31, 2016.

Cooking

In addition to his business and scientific interests, he is a chef, earning his culinary diploma from École de Cuisine La Varenne in France. Myhrvold's early culinary training was as an observer and unpaid apprentice at Rover's, one of Seattle's leading restaurants, with Chef Thierry Rautureau. Myhrvold is the principal author of a culinary text entitled Modernist Cuisine, released in March 2011, on the application of scientific research principles and new techniques and technology to cooking. He has also won first place at the Memphis barbecue championship and appeared as a guest judge on Top Chef.

Advocacy

On December 20, 2009, Myhrvold appeared on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS and discussed his patented idea to eliminate global warming/climate change using geoengineering. It involves using hoses suspended from helium balloons 25 kilometers (16 mi) above the Earth. The hoses would be placed near the North Pole and the South Pole and emit sulfur dioxide, which is known to scatter light. Myhrvold estimated that such a configuration could "easily dim the sun by one percent, and even do it in a way that wouldn't be visible."

An evaluation of the potential negative impact of releasing large amounts of sulfur dioxide (SO₂) into the atmosphere, which, when combined with water moisture ( H₂O ) can produce sulfuric acid ( H₂SO₄ ) is needed. Significant environmental efforts aimed at scrubbing SO₂ from automobile exhausts and coal-burning power plants over since the 1970s have been largely successful in eliminating acid rain as an environmental pollutant.

Controversy

In the popular press, Myhrvold and Intellectual Ventures have been repeatedly accused of acting as patent trolls and stifling innovation by buying patents and then forcing inventors to license their ideas by means of litigation. Walt Mossberg interviewed Myhrvold about Intellectual Ventures' role as a "patent troll" during the 10th annual All Things Digital conference. This American Life's Laura Sydell ran an investigative story about patent trolling and Intellectual Ventures' role in that business.

According to CNET, Intellectual Ventues controls nearly 40,000 intellectual assets (patents and patents pending) that it has used to extract approximately $2 billion (as of 2011) in the form of license fees. Companies ranging from SAP to Samsung are currently licensing their patents.

Myhrvold is critical of procedures and results about asteroid diameters published by the NEOWISE team. His work on the subject, yet to be peer reviewed, is heavily criticized by Phil Plait.

Affiliations and awards

Myhrvold is a member of the USA Science and Engineering Festival's Advisory Board. In 2010, he was named by Foreign Policy magazine to its list of top 100 global thinkers. He was selected as the keynote speaker for the UCLA College commencement ceremonies on Friday, June 12, 2015.

In 2013, Myhrvold was a judge for the inaugural Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering.