Mark Shuttleworth
South African entrepreneur; second self-funded visitor to the International Space Station
Mark Richard Shuttleworth (born 18 September 1973) is a South African and British entrepreneur, founder and CEO of Canonical, the company behind the Linux operating system variant Ubuntu. In 2002, Shuttleworth became the first African to travel to space, doing so as a space tourist. He holds dual citizenship from South Africa and the United Kingdom. In 2020, the Sunday Times Rich List estimated Shuttleworth's net worth to be £500 million.
Early life
Shuttleworth was born in Welkom, Free State, South Africa, to a surgeon and a nursery-school teacher. He attended Western Province Preparatory School (where he became Head Boy in 1986), followed by one term at Rondebosch Boys' High School, and then Bishops/Diocesan College where he was Head Boy in 1991. Shuttleworth obtained a Bachelor of Business Science degree in Finance and Information Systems at the University of Cape Town. As a student, he was involved in the installation of the university's first residential Internet connections. Since childhood, Mark Shuttleworth had a dream of becoming a cosmonaut and flying into space.
Work
In 1995, Shuttleworth founded Thawte Consulting, a company specialising in digital certificates and Internet security.
The public source identifies “Mark Shuttleworth” as south African entrepreneur; second self-funded visitor to the International Space Station. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Mark, Shuttleworth and South.
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The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q227030. VIAF identifies the subject as 262228999. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1973, 2002, 2020 and 1986.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mark Shuttleworth” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.