David Cheriton- $1.7 billion

The Canadian entry on the list, Vancouver native David Cheriton attended high school in Alberta. He attended the University of Alberta for a brief period studying mathematics, after being rejected from the school’s music program. He received his degree in mathematics at the University of British Colombia (UBC). His Masters and PhD were received at the University of Waterloo. After he finished school, Cheriton became an Assistant Professor for 3 years at UBC and he eventually became a Computer Science professor at Stanford.
A decade after he moved to Stanford, Ontario, Cheriton co-founded Granite Systems, a gigabit ethernet production company. The company went on to be bought by Cisco Systems in 1996. Two years later, he met Stanford students Sergey Brin and Larry Page and wrote the first  $100 000 cheque to fund what would soon becomes the billion dollar company, Google. He has also gone on to co-found companies like Arastra (Ethernet switches production company) and Kealia.
Cheriton’s Google investment is worth over $1 billion, making him the 20th wealthiest Canadian and the 882ns person in the world. Despite this, he has been known to live a very modest lifestyle. Taking advantage of his extensive wealth, he has made many donations, including $25 million to the Computer Science Program at the University of Waterloo as well as $2 million to UBC to fund the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative (CWSEI).