Henry Thompson Nicholas III (born 1959) is an American businessman who is a co-founder of Broadcom Corporation, and former co-chairman of its board, president, and chief executive officer (CEO) of the company. , Nicholas was ranked number 520 on Forbes billionaire's list with a net worth of $5.7 billion. Early life and education Henry Nicholas was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Marcella and Henry T. Nicholas Jr. When Nicholas was four, his parents divorced and he moved with his mother and sister to Los Angeles, California. His mother later married Robert Leach, a journalist and Hollywood screenwriter. Nicholas attended elementary schools in Malibu, and progressed to Santa Monica High School. Nicholas has dyslexia. After attending the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Nicholas graduated from UCLA School of Engineering in 1982 with a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering. He earned a master's degree in 1985, and a PhD. in electrical engineering from UCLA in 1998. His doctoral dissertation became the basis for the development of the integrated circuit (IC) that Broadcom sold. Early career After graduating from UCLA in the 1980s, Nicholas worked at TRW in Redondo Beach, California, where he met Henry Samueli, his future business partner, who was a professor of engineering at UCLA. Nicholas later moved to PairGain Technologies in Cerritos, where he was director of microelectronics. He left PairGain in 1991 to start Broadcom Corporation with Samueli. Broadcom Nicholas and Samueli founded Broadcom in the spare bedroom of Nicholas' Redondo Beach condominium in 1991. Each partner invested $5,000 of their own money, and they floated the company in 1998. Nicholas retired from Broadcom in 2003, ostensibly to work on his marriage. Philanthropy In 2003, Nicholas and his wife founded the Henry T. and Stacey Nicholas Foundation, a private non-profit foundation whose goals were to invest in education, youth sports, technology, medical research, victims' rights and national defense. Following their separation in 2006, it was renamed The Henry T. Nicholas III Foundation. In 2008, the Nicholas Academic Center was opened in downtown Santa Ana, California, in partnership with retired Orange County judge Jack Mandel, on whose program the schools are based. The second center opened in 2009 on the campus of Valley High School in Santa Ana. In 2004, Nicholas donated $10million to St. Margaret's Episcopal School in Orange County and for the formation of a partnership with the University of California,