Seven Things You Didn't Know About Steve Jobs

The respect that Steve Jobs commanded didn't stem exclusively from his position as the co-founder and visionary CEO of Apple. A man of diverse interests, hailed as a revolutionary, Jobs strictly kept his personal life to himself. But he always stood by what he believed in with little concern about his image.

Here are some lesser-known facts about Jobs, whose personal life was marked by experiments with the obscure.

1. Arab Descent - Steve Jobs' biological father was Abdulfattah John Jandali, a Syrian-American Muslim and ex-political science professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. Jandali, then a political science student from Homs, Syria, and Joanne Carole Schieble, an American graduate student, were unmarried when Jobs was born in 1955. The baby was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs of Mountain View, Calif., who named him Steven Paul.

Jandali, 80, now the vice president at Boomtown Hotel Casino, Reno, declined to comment on the untimely death of his world-famous son, with whom he had no relationship.

In an interview with The Sun in August, Jandali, who publicly expressed his regret for giving his son up for adoption, said: I live in hope that before it is too late he will reach out to me, he said. Even to have just one coffee with him just once would make me a very happy man.

Even though Jandali was desperate to meet his son, he said his Syrian pride stopped him from reaching out to Jobs himself.

This might sound strange, though, but I am not prepared, even if either of us was on our deathbed, to pick up the phone to call him, Jandali said. Steve will have to do that as the Syrian pride in me does not want him ever to think I am after his fortune. I am not. I have my own money. What I don't have is my son ... and that saddens me.

2. Experiments with Psychedelics - Albert Hofmann, the creator of LSD, once wrote a letter to Steve Jobs who had publicly praised the positive influence the drug had on his creative thought process. Jobs was among many computer pioneers who attended the 2006 LSD conference Problem Child and Wonder Drug, which celebrated the 100th birthday of its creator Hofmann.

In the 2005 book What the Dormouse Said, New York Times reporter John Markoff quotes Jobs describing his LSD experience as one of the two or three most important things he has done in his life.

4. Embracing Buddhism - After graduating from high school in 1972, Jobs enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Ore., only to drop out after the first semester. He continued auditing classes at Reed, while sleeping on the floor in friends' rooms, returning Coke bottles for food money, and getting weekly free meals at the local Hare Krishna temple. Jobs later said, If I had never dropped in on that single calligraphy course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts.

He also traveled to India to visit the Neem Karoli Baba at his Kainchi Ashram with a Reed friend (and, later, the first Apple employee), Daniel Kottke, seeking spiritual enlightenment. He came back a Buddhist with his head shaved and wearing traditional Indian clothing.

His marriage to Laurene Powell on March 18, 1991, was presided over by the Zen monk Kobun Chino Otogawa.

5. Roots in 1960s Counterculture - Early photographs (when Jobs was 21 and had only recently founded Apple) show Jobs sporting long and hippie-like hair and, as late as 1988, a photograph from the Douhlas Menuez Photography Collection shows him barefoot at a business meeting, according to a Stanford University press release.

Moving on, although Jobs participated in the 1970s counterculture, he interpreted his role in it differently.

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are the true revolutionaries of our time. Not the students who occupied the dean's office in the late '60s. Not the anti-war marchers who were determined to overthrow the establishment. Jobs and Gates are the ones who changed the way the world thinks, acts and communicates, said Martyn Burke, director of the film Pirates of Silicon Valley, which documented the rise of Personal Computers, in an interview.

6. Dating Joan Baez - In the unauthorized biography, The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, author Alan Deutschman reports that Jobs once dated Joan Baez, the folk musician, human rights and peace activist and Bob Dylan's onetime girlfriend. Deutschman quotes Elizabeth Holmes, a friend of Jobs from his time at Reed, as saying she believed that Steve became the lover of Joan Baez in large measure because Baez had been the lover of Bob Dylan.

In another unauthorized biography, iCon: Steve Jobs by Jeffrey S. Young and William L. Simon, the authors suggest that Jobs might have married Baez but her age at the time (41) meant it was unlikely the couple could have children.

Jobs was also a fan of The Beatles. He referred to them on multiple occasions at keynotes and was also interviewed when he showed up at a Paul McCartney concert. When asked about his business model on 60 Minutes, he replied: My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each other's negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts. Great things in business are not done by one person, they are done by a team of people.

6. Denying First Daughter's Paternity - Jobs' first daughter was Lisa Brennan-Jobs, born 1978 from his relationship with Bay Area painter Chrisann Brennan. She briefly raised their daughter on welfare when Jobs denied paternity by claiming he was sterile; he later acknowledged Lisa as his daughter. Jobs had a son and two daughters from his marriage to Laurene Powell.

7. Novelist Sister Mona Simpson - Jobs' biological parents Jandali and Joanne were married 10 months after giving Jobs up for adoption and they gave birth to and raised Jobs' biological sister, novelist Mona Simpson (born Mona Jandali). Simpson, the author of novels, Anywhere But Here and The Lost Father, fictionalized the character of her brother in the novel A Regular Guy, with little effort to disguise Jobs under the mask of the protagonist.

The novel which opens with a sentence, He was a man too busy to flush toilets, portrays the life of an obsessive narcissist genius, Thomas Rudolf Owens.

Simpson also shares her name with a character in the popular television show The Simpsons. Her ex-husband Richard Appel is a writer for The Simpsons, who used his wife's name for Homer Simpson's mother, beginning with the episode Mother Simpson.