Meet Salman Khan at www.khanacademy.org

alman Khan is the new math guru on the Internet. How did he decide to get started on this?

"It began with long-distance tutoring in late 2004. He agreed to help his niece Nadia, then a seventh-grader struggling with unit conversion, by providing math lessons over Yahoo's interactive notepad, Doodle, and the phone.

Nephews and family friends soon followed. But scheduling conflicts and repeated lectures prompted him to post instructional videos on YouTube that his proliferating pupils could watch when they had the time.

They did - and before long, so did thousands of others. Today, the Mountain View resident's 800-plus videos are viewed about 35,000 times a day, forming a virtual classroom that dwarfs any brick and mortar school he might have imagined. By using the reach of the Internet, he's helped bring education to the information-hungry around the world who can't afford private tutors or Kaplan prep courses.

"With so little effort on my own part, I can empower an unlimited amount of people for all time," Khan, 33, said. "I can't imagine a better use of my time."

That, along with last year's Wall Street meltdown, is why he finally gave up his hedge fund work and dedicated himself to the academy full time in the fall of 2008. The nonprofit generated thousands in advertising revenue this year through YouTube, which shares cash with popular content providers, and could become self-sustainable as a one-person operation within a year. Khan is in talks with several foundations for capital that could enable him to expand the organization's reach....."

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