Businessman and electrical engineer Irwin Mark Jacobs has an estimated net worth of $1.21 billion as of April 2016 according to Forbes. He currently serves as the chairman of the board of trustees of Salk Institute. Previously, he served as the former chairman and co-founder of Qualcomm.

Irwin Mark Jacobs was born on October 18, 1933 in New Bedford, Massachusetts, U.S.A. Of Jewish ancestry, Jacobs has been married to Joan Klein since 1954. They have four children together named Hal, Jeff, Paul, and Gary.

He attended Cornell University where he finished his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1956. He then attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he completed his S.M. and Sc.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, in 1957 and 1959.

In 1994, he became a recipient of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation and  Cornell University Entrepreneur of the Year Award. A year later, he won the IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal for outstanding contributions to telecommunications which also include theory, practice, leadership and product development. In 2001, he received the Bower Award for Business Leadership.

From 1966 to 1972, he worked for the University of California, San Diego as an Electrical Engineering Assistant and Associate Professor at MIT. It was in 1985 when he co-founded Qualcomm.