David Cheriton

David Cheriton, a Vancouver native who attended high school in Alberta, is the only Canadian on the list of the richest professors. After being denied from the school's music department, he studied mathematics at the University of Alberta for a short time. He graduated from the University of British Columbia with a bachelor's degree in mathematics (UBC). At the University of Waterloo, he earned his master's and doctorate degrees. Cheriton worked as an Assistant Professor at UBC for three years after graduating, and then as a Computer Science professor at Stanford.

Cheriton co-founded Granite Systems, a gigabit ethernet production company, a decade after relocating to Stanford, Ontario. Cisco Systems eventually purchased the company in 1996. He met Stanford students Sergey Brin and Larry Page two years later and wrote the first $100 000 checks to fund what would soon become the billion-dollar firm Google. He went on to co-found companies including Arrastra (which manufactures Ethernet switches) and Kealia.

Cheriton's Google stake is worth more than $1 billion, making him the 20th richest Canadian and the world's 882nd individual. Despite this, he is noted for leading a relatively simple life. He has made numerous donations, including $25 million to the University of Waterloo's Computer Science Program and $2 million to UBC's Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative (CWSEI).

Net Worth: $1.7 Billion