Charles Simonyi is a former Microsoft guru who helped create popular office programs such as Word and Excel.

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He has written several popular science books, including The Selfish Gene and holds the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford.

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The other firm in the mining race, Planetary Resources, has backing from several billionaire investors, including Google's Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, software executive Charles Simonyi and filmmaker James Cameron.

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