An outstanding student, he was valedictorian of his class.

In high school in Miami, Jeffrey first fell in love with computers.

When he was a teenager, the family moved to Miami, Florida. He also developed intense and varied scientific interests, rigging an electric alarm to keep his younger siblings out of his room and converting his parents’ garage into a laboratory for his science projects. Even as a toddler, he asserted himself by dismantling his crib with a screwdriver. He retired early to the family ranch, where Jeffrey spent most of the summers of his youth, working with his grandfather at the enormously varied tasks essential to the operation.įrom an early age, Jeffrey displayed a striking mechanical aptitude. Jeffrey’s grandfather was a regional director of the Atomic Energy Commission in Albuquerque. Jeffrey’s maternal ancestors were early settlers in Texas, and over the generations had acquired a 25,000-acre ranch at Cotulla. When he married Jeffrey’s mother, the family moved to Houston, where Mike Bezos became an engineer for Exxon. Jeffrey’s stepfather, Mike Bezos, was born in Cuba he escaped to the United States alone at age 15, and worked his way through the University of Albuquerque. His mother was still in her teens, and her marriage to his father lasted little more than a year. Bezos was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Bezos 1