Peter Thiel enjoys a uniquely newsworthy life: He’s made billions founding famous tech companies, supports controversial political causes, helped sue a media company into bankruptcy, and wrote Zero to One, an economics guidebook that shook up the tech industry.

Born in Germany in 1967, Thiel as a toddler moved with his family to the US. As a teen, he was state math champion and a nationally ranked chess player. He earned a bachelor’s degree and law degree at Stanford University, where he founded The Stanford Review, a right-leaning student paper that he still supports. Thiel taught a Stanford class in business startups that became the basis for Zero to One.

He worked on Wall Street, clerked for a federal judge, and began his startup career by helping launch online payments-processor giant PayPal. He later founded Palantir Technologies, a big data analysis company that has controversially worked with the US government in the fields of surveillance and terrorism. He also started a venture capital firm, Founders Fund. A fan of science fiction and the fantasy novels of JRR Tolkien, Thiel has named several of his companies after features in the Lord of the Rings books.