Patrick Joseph McGovern

Patrick J. McGovern
McGovern awarded the “Innovation Award” for VIA Nano Processor in 2009
Born	Patrick Joseph McGovern, Jr. August 11, 1937 Queens, New York
Died	March 19, 2014(2014-03-19) (aged 76)
Nationality	USA
Alma mater	Massachusetts Institute of Technology (B.S., Biophysics, 1959)
Occupation	businessman, publisher, entrepreneur
Known for	founding Computerworld magazine, large donation to MIT to found the McGovern Institute for Brain Research

Patrick Joseph McGovern, Jr. (August 11, 1937 – March 19, 2014) was an American businessman, known for being chairman and co-founder of International Data Group (IDG), a company that includes subsidiaries in technology publishing, research, event management and venture capital.

He was listed on the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans in September, 2013 as having a net worth of $5.1 billion.

Forbes magazine claims he earned a scholarship by designing an unbeatable tic-tac-toe program in the 1950s. He worked at the MIT student newspaper The Tech on the features staff during his sophomore year. McGovern received a degree in course 7, or biology/life sciences, from MIT, in 1959.

After university, his first job was a writer for Computers & Automation magazine; the first computer magazine, founded, published and edited by Edmund C. Berkeley. McGovern started International Data Corporation (IDC) in 1964, which produced a computer industry database (based on a customer list purlined from IBM) and published a newsletter, EDP Industry & Market Report (based on a newsletter, "ADP Newsletter, published by The Diebold Group. After three years, the company was losing money and McGovern contemplated liquidating it, until he hit on the idea of making the newsletter into a weekly newspaper Computerworld, in 1967. Subsequently, after failing to wrest control of "Computer and Automation" from his friend and mentor, Ed Berkeley, he started "PC World".

In 1980 he created one of the first American-Chinese joint ventures, and in 1997 Forbes estimated that "Pat McGovern has more readers in China than the People's Daily does." In 1991 his company published "DOS For Dummies", the first of the very popular "For Dummies" series of books explaining various subjects to the lay person.Bloomberg News reported that IDG had 280 million regular readers of its publications, and annual revenues of $3.6 billion.