Gary Grant Hendrix (born May 14, 1948) is an American businessman who founded Symantec Corporation, an international corporation which produces

computer software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

, particularly in the fields of

information management Information management (IM) is the appropriate and optimized capture, storage, retrieval, and use of information. It may be personal information management or organizational. Information management for organizations concerns a cycle of organiz ...

and antivirus software.

Education

Hendrix obtained his

undergraduate degree An undergraduate degree (also called first degree or simply degree) is a colloquial term for an academic degree earned by a person who has completed undergraduate courses. In the United States, it is usually offered at an institution of higher ed ...

at the University of Texas in May 1970 and then received his

master's degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional prac ...

from the same institution in December 1970. Hendrix decided to study in the

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

field as Advanced Research Projects Agency announced a series of funding for six projects in natural language understanding in 1970. In January 1971, Hendrix enrolled in the PhD program at the University of Texas and was assigned Robert Simmons as his adviser. He completed his dissertation in 1975.

Career

While at the University of Texas, Hendrix published several papers on robotics and planning, which several people from

SRI International SRI International (SRI) is a nonprofit organization, nonprofit scientific research, scientific research institute and organization headquartered in Menlo Park, California, United States. It was established in 1946 by trustees of Stanford Univer ...

read. This led to an invitation for him to work at SRI, which he accepted and subsequently moved to Menlo Park,

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. After several years at SRI, he left with fifteen SRI employees to form Machine Intelligence Corporation, which ultimately failed. Afterward, Hendrix founded Symantec Corporation in 1982 with the help of a

National Science Foundation The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...

grant. The company was originally focused on

-related projects, and Hendrix hired several

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

natural language processing Natural language processing (NLP) is a subfield of computer science and especially artificial intelligence. It is primarily concerned with providing computers with the ability to process data encoded in natural language and is thus closely related ...

researchers as the company's first employees. To finance the company, Hendrix went to an American Electronics Association financial conference in Monterey, California in May 1983. After demonstrating their product on an early

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

computer, businesses became interested in obtaining their product. Hendrix left the company in 1991 and moved to Dripping Springs, Texas.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hendrix, Gary Living people Businesspeople in software Gen Digital people University of Texas at Austin alumni People from Menlo Park, California SRI International people 1948 births