Centre point: Hermann Hauser discusses commercialising technology

There aren’t many people who can claim to have had a demonstrable effect on the way we live. Cambridge-based entrepreneur Hermann Hauser has more claim than most: as one of the co-founders of Acorn Computing in the late 1970s, Hauser was instrumental in the rise of the personal computer, which plays such a central role in our home and professional lives.

Born in Austria, Hauser has lived in the UK for most of his life. He first came here aged 15 to learn English, and apart from a return to Vienna to take his first degree, has stayed here ever since. His career-long association with Cambridge, both as a university and as a city, has put him at the centre of the so-called ’Cambridge Phenomenon’, which has seen the university launch a large number of companies spinning off from research in its science laboratories and made the region a centre for high-technology business.