Henry Thompson Nicholas III (born October 8, 1959) is an American businessman who is a co-founder of

Broadcom Corporation Broadcom Corporation was an American fabless manufacturing, fabless semiconductor company that made products for the wireless and broadband communication industry. It was acquired by Avago Technologies for $37billion in 2016 and operates as a ...

, and former co-chairman of its board, president, and

chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

(CEO) of the company. , Nicholas is the 99th wealthiest person in the world according to ''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine founded by B. C. Forbes in 1917. It has been owned by the Hong Kong–based investment group Integrated Whale Media Investments since 2014. Its chairman and editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes. The co ...

'' billionaire's list with a net worth of US$20.0 billion.

Early life and education

Henry Nicholas was born in

Cincinnati, Ohio Cincinnati ( ; colloquially nicknamed Cincy) is a city in Hamilton County, Ohio, United States, and its county seat. Settled in 1788, the city is located on the northern side of the confluence of the Licking River (Kentucky), Licking and Ohio Ri ...

, 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 Hollywood usually refers to: * Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California * Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States Hollywood may also refer to: Places United States * Hollywood District (disambiguation) * Hollywood ...

screenwriter. Nicholas attended elementary schools in Malibu, and progressed to

Santa Monica High School Santa Monica High School, officially abbreviated to Samohi or SMHS, is a public high school in Santa Monica, California. Founded in 1891, it changed location several times in its early years before settling into its present campus at 601 Pico Bo ...

. Nicholas has

dyslexia Dyslexia (), previously known as word blindness, is a learning disability that affects either reading or writing. Different people are affected to different degrees. Problems may include difficulties in spelling words, reading quickly, wri ...

. After attending the

United States Air Force Academy The United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) is a United States service academies, United States service academy in Air Force Academy, Colorado, Air Force Academy Colorado, immediately north of Colorado Springs, Colorado, Colorado Springs. I ...

Colorado Springs Colorado Springs is the most populous city in El Paso County, Colorado, United States, and its county seat. The city had a population of 478,961 at the 2020 census, a 15.02% increase since 2010. Colorado Springs is the second-most populous c ...

, Colorado, Nicholas graduated from UCLA School of Engineering in 1982 with a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...

degree in

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

. He earned a master's degree in 1985, and a PhD. in electrical engineering from

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...

in 1998."Alumnus Dr. Henry T. Nicholas, III was Named for the IEEE Frederik Philips Award for 2014"
, UCLA Engineering News, 2014. His doctoral dissertation became the basis for the development of the

integrated circuit An integrated circuit (IC), also known as a microchip or simply chip, is a set of electronic circuits, consisting of various electronic components (such as transistors, resistors, and capacitors) and their interconnections. These components a ...

(IC) that Broadcom sold.

Early career

After graduating from UCLA in the 1980s, Nicholas worked at TRW in

Redondo Beach, California Redondo Beach (Spanish for ) is a coastal city in Los Angeles County, California, United States, located in the South Bay (Los Angeles County), South Bay region of the Greater Los Angeles area. It is one of three adjacent Beach Cities, beach c ...

, where he met

Henry Samueli Henry Samueli (born September 20, 1954) is an American businessman and engineer. He is a co-founder of Broadcom Corporation, owner of the Anaheim Ducks of the National Hockey League (NHL), and a prominent philanthropist in the Orange County, C ...

, 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

nonprofit foundation A foundation (also referred to as a charitable foundation) is a type of nonprofit organization or charitable trust that usually provides funding and support to other charitable organizations through grants, while also potentially participating d ...

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 Santa Ana (Spanish language, Spanish for ) is a city in and the county seat of Orange County, California, United States. Located in the Greater Los Angeles region of Southern California, the city's population was 310,227 at the 2020 census. As ...

, 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, Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Irvine, California, United States. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, U ...

's Henry Samueli School of Engineering to explore the application of technology to enhance learning. In addition, Nicholas provided St. Margaret scholarships to students from Santa Ana. Nicholas also supports

Oakland Military Institute Oakland Military Institute, formally the ''Oakland Military Institute College Preparatory Academy'', is a charter school run by the California Military Department's Youth and Community Programs Task Force in partnership with the Oakland Unified S ...

. Nicholas has financially supported South Coast Repertory, the

Bowers Museum The Bowers Museum is an art museum located in Santa Ana, California, Santa Ana, California. The museum's permanent collection includes more than 100,000 objects, and features notable strengths in the areas of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, Native Ame ...

in Santa Ana, and

Orange County Performing Arts Center The Segerstrom Center for the Arts (originally called Orange County Performing Arts Center) is a performing arts complex in Costa Mesa, California, Costa Mesa, California, United States, which opened in 1986. Designed by Charles Lawrence, the Cen ...

Personal life

In 1987, Nicholas married Stacey, a former electrical engineer, with whom he had three children. Nicholas is now divorced and separated from his later girlfriends Melissa Montero and Ashley Christine Fargo. He lives in Newport Coast, California. In April 2008, he admitted himself to an alcohol rehabilitation program of the

Betty Ford Center The Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation is an addiction treatment and advocacy organization that was created in 2014 with the merger of the Minnesota-based Hazelden Foundation and the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, California, in the United State ...

and completed his treatment at Cliffside Malibu.

Criminal charges

In June 2008, Nicholas and other Broadcom executives were indicted for stock fraud and options backdating. At the same time, Nicholas was also indicted on drug charges. The charges caused considerable scandal, and were the subject of much speculation in the press. Judge Cormac J. Carney threw out the stock fraud and options backdating charges in December 2009. The drug charges were dropped in January 2010. The judge, in dismissing the charges, accused the prosecution of a "shameful" campaign of witness intimidation aimed at securing unjustified convictions. In August 2018, Nicholas was arrested in

Las Vegas Las Vegas, colloquially referred to as Vegas, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and the county seat of Clark County. The Las Vegas Valley metropolitan area is the largest within the greater Mojave Desert, and second-l ...

on suspicion of drug trafficking after a variety of drugs, including

marijuana Cannabis (), commonly known as marijuana (), weed, pot, and ganja, List of slang names for cannabis, among other names, is a non-chemically uniform psychoactive drug from the ''Cannabis'' plant. Native to Central or South Asia, cannabis has ...

heroin Heroin, also known as diacetylmorphine and diamorphine among other names, is a morphinan opioid substance synthesized from the Opium, dried latex of the Papaver somniferum, opium poppy; it is mainly used as a recreational drug for its eupho ...

cocaine Cocaine is a tropane alkaloid and central nervous system stimulant, derived primarily from the leaves of two South American coca plants, ''Erythroxylum coca'' and ''Erythroxylum novogranatense, E. novogranatense'', which are cultivated a ...

methamphetamine Methamphetamine (contracted from ) is a potent central nervous system (CNS) stimulant that is mainly used as a recreational drug use, recreational or Performance-enhancing substance, performance-enhancing drug and less commonly as a secon ...

and ecstasy were found in his hotel suite. In August 2019, he entered an

Alford plea In United States law, an Alford plea, also called a Kennedy plea in West Virginia, an Alford guilty plea, and the Alford doctrine, is a guilty plea in criminal court, whereby a defendant in a criminal case does not admit to the criminal act a ...

to two felony drug-possession charges; he agreed to donate $1 million to a drug treatment-and-rehabilitation program, to perform 250 hours of community service, and to go to drug counseling. In exchange, the prosecution dismissed five more-serious drug trafficking charges and did not seek a prison sentence. The case was later dismissed.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nicholas, Henry American billionaires American male criminals University of California, Irvine faculty UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science alumni Businesspeople from Cincinnati 1959 births Living people 21st-century American criminals American businesspeople convicted of crimes American people convicted of drug offenses People from Glendale, Ohio People with dyslexia 20th-century American businesspeople 21st-century American businesspeople Victims' rights