Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com, will receive a 2015 Genius Award from Liberty Science Center, an interactive science museum located in Jersey City, New Jersey. Besides his contribution to the growth of e-commerce, Bezos will be recognized for founding Blue Origin, LLC, an aerospace manufacturer that is developing a sequence of technologies to enable private human access to space.

Along with Bezos, two others will be honored for their work at the science center’s annual Genius Gala this May. They are Vint Cerf, often referred to as the father of the Internet, and Jill Tarter, Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Research at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California.

Bezos received an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering and computer science from Princeton in 1986. After graduation, he worked on Wall Street. In 1994, he moved to Seattle and founded Amazon.com as an online bookstore. He continues to grow and diversify the company. Blue Origin was founded in 2000, but it was not until 2006 that the privately funded spaceflight company became known to the public. In 2013, Bezos became the owner of The Washington Post.

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