Ken Jennings
Ken Jennings was (as of December 2009) the record-holder for the most TV quiz show winnings. He is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (sometimes casually called the Mormon Church).
Kenneth Wayne "Ken" Jennings III was born May 23, 1974, in Edmonds, Washington. Jennings grew up in Seoul, South Korea (1981–1992) and Singapore (1992–1996), where his father worked for an international law firm and then as Asia Pacific Division Counsel of Oracle Corporation. Jennings attended the University of Washington during his freshman year of college and then graduated with a degree in Computer Science and English from Brigham Young University, where he played on the school's quizbowl team for three and a half years. He graduated from Seoul Foreign School where he completed an International Baccalaureate diploma, and achieved honors at Brigham Young. He served a two-year mission for the Church in Madrid, Spain from 1993 to 1995. He now lives in Seattle, Washington, D.C., and is married to the former Mindy Boam. They have two children.
During his Jeopardy! winning streak, Jennings was a software engineer for CHG Healthcare, a healthcare-placement firm in Salt Lake City, Utah. He writes questions for, edits the literature and mythology categories of questions of, and is otherwise active in the National Academic Quiz Tournaments (NAQT), a quiz bowl organization; in particular, he moderated (i.e., read questions) at the 2005, 2006, and 2009 NAQT National High School Tournaments in Chicago.
Jennings holds the record for the longest winning streak on the U.S. syndicated game show Jeopardy! and, as of October 10, 2008, once again became the all-time leading money winner on American game shows. [1] In 2004, he won 74 Jeopardy! games before he was defeated on his 75th appearance. The length of Jennings's Jeopardy! run (by airing) totaled 182 calendar days, including his first and last appearances. The TV show's ratings increased considerably during this run. His total earnings on Jeopardy! were US $3,022,700. Jennings has appeared on other TV quiz shows, adding to his earnings and making him the record holder, at a total of US $3,623,414.29. He has also been a guest on various talk shows.
When asked what he intended to do with his streak winnings, Jennings said that he intended to tithe ten percent to his church, donate to public television and National Public Radio, go on a trip to Europe, and invest the rest for his family. H&R Block offered Jennings free tax planning and financial services for the rest of his life.[2]
Jennings has written two books: Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs, published in 2006; and Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac: 8,888 Questions in 365 Days, a compilation of trivia questions - with 3 categories and about 20 questions per day of the year. Jennings also has had a column in Mental Floss magazine called "Six Degrees of Ken Jennings", in which readers submit two wildly different things and he has to connect them in exactly six moves, much in the same vein as the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game.
Jennings’ success has resulted in him being a popular individual amongst corporations looking for public endorsers. He has appeared for Microsoft, Cingular Wireless, Allstate Insurance, and others.
Jennings will appear on Jeopardy! again in February, 2011. An IBM computing system named “Watson” will compete on Jeopardy! against the show’s two most successful and celebrated contestants — Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. "Watson, named after IBM founder Thomas J. Watson, was built by a team of IBM scientists who set out to accomplish a grand challenge – build a computing system that rivals a human’s ability to answer questions posed in natural language with speed, accuracy and confidence." [3]
