Founder & Co-Chairman, Michelson Medical Research Foundation

Michelson launched the Michelson Medical Research Foundation in 1995. The orthopedic spinal surgeon holds more than 950 issued or pending medical patents. Michelson became a billionaire in 2005 thanks to a $1.35 billion settlement with medical manufacturing giant Medtronic that followed an extended legal battle over his patents. In 2014, Michelson gifted $50 million to USC to establish the USC Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience; in February, Peter Kuhn, the center’s director of the Convergent Science Institute in Cancer was summoned to the White House to help relaunch the Cancer Moonshot, which aims to reduce the cancer death rate in the United States by 50% over the next 25 years.

YEARS ON THE LA500: 6