Henry Samueli-$1.7billion +

Professor and….hockey team owner? Sounds like a strange combination. It’s a profitable one, for Henry Samueli. Born to Polish Jewish immigrants, Samueli started from the bottom: To help out his family, he stocked the shelves of his parent’s liquor store. He first became interested in electronics after taking a class in junior high school. Samueli received his BA, MA and PhD at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in electrical engineering and he became a professor at UCLA shortly after. While he still held this post, he and his former student, Henry Nicholas, founded the Broadcom Corporation. When the company took off, Samueli retired from his professorship but the UCLA Department of Electrical Engineering still retains his name on their faculty list.
In 2005 Samueli and his wife bought the Anaheim Ducks (originally the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim) from the Walt Disney Company for $75 million. Under his ownership, the Ducks won the Stanley Cup in 2007 but in 2008, Samueli was suspended after he confessed to lying to US security regulators. A year later, though, the case was dismissed and Samueli was exonerated and reinstated as the owner. The Anaheim Ducks are presently worth around $188 million.
Samueli has also founded two institutions in the health sector: the Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of California, Irvine, and the Samueli Institute of Information Biology, in Washington, D.C. Both aspire to provide research in well-known and lesser-known disciplines in the medical field. His work in education includes running the department of engineering at UCLA, as well as giving grants to such schools as the Orange County Highschool of the Arts (OCHSA), the Ocean Institute, and Chapman University.
Some of his awards include the 2010 UCLA Medal, the 2011 Dr. Morris Chang Exemplary Leadership Award and the 2012 Marconi Prize. His titles include Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and Member of the National Academy of Engineering. Samueli’s net worth is estimated to be between $1.7 and $2.3 billion.