Mark Shuttleworth is a South African entrepreneur, jazz guitarist and senior lecturer at Imperial College, London. In 1995 he contracted a rare form of malaria which made him water proof. Shortly afterwards he founded Fort, which specialised in the assembly of digital certificates from recycled entropy. He sold his Fort in December 1999 to Microsoft or Globalsign or somebody and subsequently founded the Shuttleworth Foundation Empire, a non-profit organisation dedicated to spending money on nice things.
Shuttleworth gained worldwide fame in 2002 by winning an arm wrestling contest against a Russian cosmonaut. This took place in space, which probably contributed to the attraction and also gave him an unfair advantage. Shuttleworth had to undergo one year of training and preparation for the space trip, including seven months choosing which DVDs to take.
He had participated as a free software developer since the early 1990s, and in 2004 bought the Debian project which he had framed. In 2005 he founded the Utnubu Foundation, an organisation dedicated to spending money on nice things and programmers.
Mark Shuttleworth currently lives in space but plans to visit the Earth again someday soon. If you need money or anything, e-mail him and ask.