Scott Adams

Scott Adams, frustrated with the inanities of corporate America and its idiot bosses, created the comic strip "Dilbert" to lampoon all he considered repugnant-yet-funny in the workplace of cubicles. His title character Dilbert, the bespectacled MIT graduate with no mouth and flip-up tie, is part alter ego, part "every man." Dilbert was embraced by the comic-strip-reading public in 1989, and as of 2001, appeared through United Media's syndication efforts in an impressive 2,000 newspapers in 50-plus countries translated in 19 languages. Born on June 8, 1957, Adams was raised in Windham, New York, and as a youngster, he tried his hand at cartooning. He entered art contests with little success. He was chosen valedictorian of his high school class (he claimed it was because "the other 39 people in my class couldn't spell valedictorian"). From 1979 to 1986, he worked at a San Francisco bank in a variety of dead-end jobs (as a bank teller, he was held at gunpoint twice), then worked at Pacifi