John Leroy Hennessy (born September 22, 1952) is an American computer scientist, academician, and businessman. Hennessy is one of the founders of MIPS Computer Systems Inc. as well as Atheros and is the tenth President of Stanford University. Marc Andreessen called him "the godfather of Silicon Valley". Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by Eric Chan [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.