Professor Clive Palmer is Australia's fifth richest man, and one of its most colourful, with a fortune that he most recently estimated at $6.5 billion...and rising.

With homes in Brisbane, Perth and Beijing, Professor Palmer - a native of Queensland - maintains three private jets and two helicopters.

He has dined with Russia's president Vladimir Putin, broken bread with Pope Benedict and counts US Senator Ted Kennedy as a personal friend.

Professor Palmer owns the Cold Mountain Stud, which boasts more than 120 brood mares, and recently spent A$6 million buying the football team Gold Coast United, which he has pledged to put on the sporting map.

The 55-year-old entrepreneur, who is adjunct professor at Deakin University, tends to reserve his academic title for business correspondence. But there has been plenty of that.

As chair of Mineralogy Ltd, Professor Palmer is sitting on an estimated 160 billion tonnes of iron ore assets. He further fuelled his fortune by striking a lucrative deal to develop parts of the estate with CITIC of China.

He had planned to raise more, through the $5 billion flotation of another of his businesses, Resource Development International, but that deal was put on hold late last year.

Professor Palmer, the son of George, a star of the silent movie era and pioneer of commercial radio, began his business career early.

Having grown up in Australia's Gold Coast area around Brisbane, Professor Palmer went to university during the mid-1970s, where he studied law, politics and journalism.

However, he dropped out to become a property developer just as the Gold Coast was heading for a boom.

By the time he was 29, in 1983, Professor Palmer had made $1 million, enough to retire and begin travelling the world with his new wife, Susan.

Barely two years later, while on a cruise on the QEII, he realised he was bored and needed to get back into business. "I was as fat then as I am now - I realised what I needed to do was to get back working," Professor Palmer told the Australian magazine in an interview earlier this year.

He promptly set up Mineralogy, initially coming close to striking a partnership with the Russian government, but choosing to go it alone until the CITIC deal.

Throughout his life, Professor Palmer has maintained a keen interest in politics, at one point becoming official spokesman for the Liberal National Party. His son is developing a career in politics and he continues to donate funds to the party.

Tragically, after 22 years of marriage his wife died of cancer, spurring him to set up a charitable foundation to fund medical research.

Professor Palmer initially commited A$100 million, but has pledged to donate A$1 billion over his lifetime.

He has since remarried, to Anna, and is the father of three children from both marriages.

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