Ray Tomlinson, an extraordinarily humble man, wrote, in 1971, a small software program that combined file transfer with send-and-receive protocols, giving birth to E-mail. Needing a symbol that would allow a message to be sent to the correct computer he chose—@—the only preposition on the keyboard.

Tomlinson, a genius for problem solving, has been a key contributor of several crucial network protocols including Jericho, the artificial intelligence program. Tomlison, more interested in math than money, had a laugh when he calculated that he would need only .000001 cent on the use of every @ sign to exceed Bill Gates’s fortune.

Tomlinson’s parents taught him that pride in his talents would be indecorous. He remembers the time his father punished him for crassly contradicting one of his teachers. “He made me realize that being superior in a certain way does not elevate me above someone else.”