Sorenson's goal for DNA research? World peace

Utah's richest man can't sit still for a TV program or a movie because he gets lost in the most simple plot. Yet, ideas gush from James LeVoy Sorenson like music from a savant.

Beverley Sorenson, his wife of 60 years, says she tried to get him to see "A Beautiful Mind." "I came home in tears when I saw the movie because I thought I was married to someone like that," she says. The true story about paranoid and schizophrenic math genius John Nash reminded her of the joys and frustrations of her life with a man who is both difficult and awe-inspiring.

Sorenson, 86 this month, isn't paranoid or schizophrenic. He has dyslexia, and teachers told his mother that he would never learn to read. His mother told him that he could do anything he was determined to do, and Sorenson proved her right with a string of medical inventions. It takes but a few minutes with the man to conclude that he is unorthodox. He has granted only five or six interviews to the national news media in his lifetime, and his thoughts meander so much that a few hours produce a reporter's notebook full of disconnected clutter.

A nonlinear thinker is the way friend Jack Brittain, dean of business at the University of Utah, describes him. Scott Woodward, a Brigham Young University microbiology professor who discovered a genetic marker that led to the cystic fibrosis gene, says the beautiful mind analogy is appropriate.

Forbes magazine estimates his wealth to be $4.5 billion, an amount Sorenson does not dispute. That makes him the 47th-richest American, although he sometimes acts like he is among the poorest. He wears the same suits he wore in the 1980s and is proud to say so. Beverley remembers being on a $15 weekly grocery budget while raising a large family. Don Wallace, who runs Sorenson's real estate operations, says he was hired out of the U. law school "at a bargain" but was paid fairly after he proved what he could do.

A favorite story about Sorenson is the time he took off his shoes at a trade show to reveal holes in his socks, a story his company confirms is true. Beverley says that for years he carried a 3-by-5 index card in his shirt pocket, where he would track the electric bill and every other debt he owed.

Gary Pehrson, CEO of four hospitals in Salt Lake City, says he was listening to the radio news a couple of years ago when he first learned that his friend was stratospherically rich. It so happens that a few hours later, Sorenson phoned Pehrson to invite him to lunch. Where did they go? To Sorenson's house, where Beverley made sandwiches.

Sorenson likes to make money but isn't wholly driven by it, Wallace says, because he keeps marginal businesses going for years to save workers their jobs.