Jimmy Wales, in full 

Jimmy Donal Wales, (born August 8,

1966, Huntsville, Alabama, U.S. [see Researcher’s Note]),
American entrepreneur, who cofounded Wikipedia, a free Internet-
based encyclopaedia operating under an open-source management style.

Wales received degrees in finance from Auburn University (B.S.) and

the University of Alabama (M.S.). From 1994 to 2000 he was an options
trader in Chicago, amassing enough money to allow him to quit and start his
own Internet company. Wales was a devotee of objectivism, and in 1989 he
began moderating the online Ayn Rand Philosophy Discussion List. In March
2000, perhaps inspired by objectivist “openness,” he founded a free online
encyclopaedia called Nupedia, which sought free contributions from scholars
and other experts and subjected them to an intensive peer-review process.
Frustrated by the slow progress of this project, Wales and Nupedia’s editor in
chief, Larry Sanger, in 2001 turned to a new technology, a type of software
called wiki, to create Wikipedia, a companion encyclopaedia site that anyone
could contribute to and edit. Sanger and Wales parted company in 2002, but
they continued to dispute who first came up with the idea of using the wiki
software.

Despite certain vulnerabilities—including the fact that Wikipedia was the

object of deliberate vandalism, editorial wars, and practical jokes—the site was
a huge success. By 2006 Wikipedia was available in a number of languages
and was one of the Internet’s most popular sites. In 2003 Wales established
the Wikimedia Foundation to oversee his expanding online enterprises. He
extended the wiki model to several other projects,
including Wiktionary and Wikinews. In 2004 he cofounded with Angela
Beesley the for-profit Wikia, Inc.