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Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (born May 14, 1984) is an American computer programmer and internet entrepreneur. He is best known as one of five co-founders of the social networking website Facebook. As of April 2013, Zuckerberg is the chairman and chief executive of Facebook, Inc. and in 2013 his personal wealth was estimated to be US$13.3 billion.

Together with his college roommates and fellow Harvard University students Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes, Zuckerberg launched Facebook from Harvard's dormitory rooms. The group then introduced Facebook onto other campuses nationwide and moved to Palo Alto, California, United States (U.S.) shortly afterwards. In 2007, at the age of twenty-three years, Zuckerberg became a billionaire as a result of Facebook and the number of Facebook users worldwide reached a total of one billion in 2012. Zuckerberg was involved in various legal disputes that were initiated by others in the group, who claimed a share of the company based upon their involvement during the development phase of Facebook.

Since 2010, Zuckerberg has been named among the 100 wealthiest and most influential people in the world by Time magazine as a part of its Person of the Year distinction. Zuckerberg was played by actor Jesse Eisenberg in the 2010 Hollywood film The Social Network in which the rise of Facebook is portrayed.

Zuckerberg was born in 1984 in White Plains, New York. He is the son of Karen (née Kempner), a psychiatrist, and Edward Zuckerberg, a dentist. He and his three sisters, Randi, Donna, and Arielle, were brought up in Dobbs Ferry, New York. Zuckerberg was raised Jewish, had his bar mitzvah when he turned thirteen, and has since described himself as an atheist.

At Ardsley High School, Zuckerberg excelled in classics. He transferred to Phillips Exeter Academy in his junior year, where he won prizes in science (math, astronomy and physics) and classical studies (on his college application, Zuckerberg claimed that he could read and write French, Hebrew, Latin, and ancient Greek). He was a fencing star and captain of the fencing team. In college, he was known for reciting lines from epic poems such as The Iliad.