Lewis’s classroom and DiCenso’s pizza place are just two of the local landmarks that figured into the early history of Facebook Inc., before Zuckerberg dropped out of school and took the company to California.
Since then, the social network has grown to become one of the largest technology companies in the world; it claims 845 million users and is planning an initial public offering of stock this spring that may value Facebook at $100 billion or more.
But for two years, from 2002 to mid-2004, Facebook was a start-up, growing against a Boston-area backdrop.
Zuckerberg did not respond to a request for an interview, but people who knew him during that time can map the sites where Facebook took shape, from the Harvard campus to a venture capital firm’s conference room in Waltham.
Lewis met Zuckerberg when the freshman took his advanced computer science course.
“Not many freshmen take it,’’ Lewis said as he scrolled back to that year’s records on his computer. “I’m looking at his midterm grade right now, which I’m not going to tell you.’’
But he did share his impressions of the young Zuckerberg, comparing him to another former student: Bill Gates, who cofounded Microsoft Corp.
“Both Mark and Bill were the kind of students who liked to move around, picking things up and putting them together in different ways,’’ Lewis said. “They were screwing around, in a good way, without a lot of reverence for the stuff we were doing.’’
There wasn’t widespread student enthusiasm for computer science in the years that Zuckerberg was in Cambridge, said Michael Rutter, communications director for Harvard’s School of Engineering and Advanced Science.
“It was right after the dot-com bust,’’ he recalled. “Computer science was still on the decline. What was hot was to be a quant,’’ he said, referring to the advanced mathematical expertise prized on pre-meltdown Wall Street.
Rutter didn’t see much of Zuckerberg. “Like a lot of students, he spent most of his time at his house,’’ he said.
