James LeVoy Sorenson (July 30, 1921 – January 20, 2008) was a lifelong inventor and entrepreneur, Utah's richest man, and founder and chairman of Sorenson Companies, a conglomerate of 32 corporations in industries ranging from medicine and bioscience to investment and development to manufacturing. His wealth was estimated to be $4.5 billion and he was one of the richest men in America, but his life did not start out with any wealth. At age ten, he was already a young and imaginative entrepreneur (though a slow learner in school and dyslexic), he sold magazines and worked in a fruit cannery to help support the family. Sorenson became "a preacher for the Mormon way," and then went to work as a pharmaceutical salesman. He invested "every dollar he could spare to buy up goat pastureland on the outskirts of Salt Lake City at $25 or $50 an acre." Sorenson later sold the acreage to uranium promoters for 100 times his original cost, and then expanded from that financial bonanza. In 1957, at age 36, he co-founded Deseret Pharmaceutical and, in 1962, founded Sorenson Research, and over his lifetime held more than 60 medical patents. He was best known for developing the first real-time computerized heart monitor, and invented the disposable paper surgical mask, the plastic venous catheter and a blood recycling system for trauma and surgical procedures, and many other medical innovations. Sorenson sold Sorenson Research in 1980 for $100 million, and he became the largest individual shareholder in Abbott Laboratories, and saw the value of the stock rise over his lifetime to $2.9 billion. He went on to purchase 70,000 acres of real estate along Utah's populous Wasatch Front, and controlled another 400,000 acres in central Utah. Sorenson later started Sorenson Media, a revolutionary video compression and communications company, and Sorenson Genomics, which compiled a vast database of human DNA for genealogy studies and preventive medical research. When he died in 2008, he was survived by Beverley, his wife of 61 years, eight children, 47 grandchildren, and 28 great-grandchildren. Jim Sorenson attended the 1982 Achievement Summit in New Orleans and spoke to the student delegates about "the power and force that is within each of us" and that tenacity and competitiveness are essential elements for success.