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Bill Gates
Who was Bill Gates?
American businessman, investor, and philanthropist (born 1955)
Biographical data adapted from Wikipedia’s article on Bill Gates (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Biography
William Henry Gates III was born on October 28, 1955, in Seattle, Washington. His father, William H. Gates Sr., was a well-known attorney, and his mother, Mary Maxwell Gates, was a schoolteacher and active community leader. Gates grew up in a home that valued intellect, ambition, and competition. He attended the private Lakeside School in Seattle, where, at age 13, he discovered his passion for programming by spending countless hours learning to code on early computer systems. At Lakeside, he met Paul Allen, and their friendship would later transform the technology industry.
In 1973, Gates started at Harvard University, studying mathematics and taking high-level computer science courses like Math 55. However, his interest shifted toward the developing personal computer market. In 1975, after seeing an ad for the Altair 8800 microcomputer in Popular Electronics, Gates and Allen reached out to its maker, MITS, claiming they had created a BASIC interpreter for it. They quickly developed the software, and the successful demonstration led to the founding of Microsoft later that year. Gates left Harvard to manage the company full-time, moving Microsoft from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Washington in 1979.
Microsoft's success took off in 1980 when IBM chose it to provide an operating system for its new PC. Gates acquired an existing system, turned it into MS-DOS, and arranged to license it to other manufacturers. This move established Microsoft as a major player in PC software. Microsoft went public in 1986, and the resulting stock surge made Gates the world's youngest billionaire in 1987 at 31. He was Microsoft's CEO for 25 years, driving the creation of Windows, Office, and expansions into internet and enterprise software. Gates stepped down as CEO in 2000, passing the baton to Steve Ballmer, and gradually took on advisory roles until he left the board in 2020.
Outside of business, Gates became a leading philanthropist. In 2000, he and Melinda French Gates established the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which became the largest private charity worldwide. The foundation has allocated tens of billions of dollars to global health, vaccine distribution, agricultural development in low-income countries, and U.S. education reform. Gates has been especially active in efforts to eliminate polio and malaria and in funding vaccine research, even during the COVID-19 pandemic. Gates and Melinda French Gates divorced in 2021, though their foundation work continued jointly until 2024. His commitment to philanthropy was formalized with the Giving Pledge, a project he started with Warren Buffett, urging billionaires to donate most of their wealth to charitable causes.
Before Fame
Gates grew up in Seattle when computing was shifting from a tool for large institutions to something with broader potential. His parents noticed his intellectual abilities early on and enrolled him in Lakeside School. There, he had access to a General Electric computer terminal in 1968, giving him his first experience with programming at a time when most people hadn't even seen a computer. He and fellow student Paul Allen formed a small group of enthusiasts who found ways to exploit bugs in the school's computer system to get free access, showing both technical skill and a willingness to push boundaries.
By his early teens, Gates had written his first commercial software, a class scheduling program for Lakeside, and co-founded a traffic-counting company called Traf-O-Data with Allen. These early projects showed not only his programming ability but also a knack for finding commercial uses, setting the stage for his future career. By the time he got to Harvard in 1973, the personal computer revolution was just starting, but Gates was already in a position, thanks to years of hands-on experience, to see and seize its potential more quickly than most.
Key Achievements
- Co-founded Microsoft in 1975 and built it into the world's largest personal computer software company
- Negotiated the MS-DOS licensing deal with IBM in 1980, establishing Microsoft's dominance in the PC operating system market
- Became the world's first centibillionaire in 1999, when his net worth briefly exceeded $100 billion
- Co-founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has contributed over $60 billion to global health, education, and poverty alleviation
- Co-founded the Giving Pledge with Warren Buffett, committing himself and encouraging other billionaires to donate the majority of their wealth to philanthropy
Did You Know?
- 01.Gates read the entire World Book Encyclopedia series from beginning to end as a child, prompting his parents to place limits on his reading at the dinner table.
- 02.The BASIC interpreter Gates and Allen wrote for the Altair 8800 in 1975 was completed without access to the actual hardware; they tested it on a software emulator and it worked correctly the first time it ran on a real Altair.
- 03.Gates took a course called Math 55 at Harvard, widely considered one of the most difficult undergraduate mathematics courses in the United States, covering in one year material typically spread across several graduate-level classes.
- 04.He was awarded an honorary degree by Harvard in 2007, more than three decades after dropping out, and delivered the commencement address at the same ceremony.
- 05.Gates's personal library includes an original copy of the Codex Leicester, a collection of scientific writings by Leonardo da Vinci, which he purchased at auction in 1994 for approximately $30.8 million.
Family & Personal Life
Awards & Honors
| Award | Year | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire | 2005 | — |
| National Medal of Technology and Innovation | 1992 | — |
| Padma Bhushan | 2015 | — |
| Cross of Recognition | 2009 | — |
| Lasker-Bloomberg Public Service Award | 2013 | — |
| Presidential Medal of Freedom | 2016 | — |
| J. William Fulbright Prize | 2010 | — |
| Silver Buffalo Award | 2010 | — |
| Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society | 1994 | — |
| United Nations Population Award | 2010 | — |
| Order of the Aztec Eagle | 2007 | — |
| Grand Cross of the Order of Prince Henry | 2006 | — |
| NAS Public Welfare Medal | 2013 | — |
| Commander of the Order of the Star of Romania | 2007 | — |
| Commander of the Legion of Honour | 2017 | — |
| Bower Award for Business Leadership | 2010 | — |
| honorary doctor of the Tsinghua University | 2007 | — |
| honorary doctor of Royal Institute of Technology | 2002 | — |
| Honorary Doctor at Karolinska Institutet | 2008 | — |
| honorary doctor of Harvard University | 2007 | — |
| Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun | 2020 | — |
| Financial Times Person of the Year | 1994 | — |
| honorary doctor of Stockholm University | 2002 | — |
| Bambi Award | 2013 | — |
| Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science | 2010 | — |
| American Library Association Honorary Membership | 1998 | — |
| Bintang Jasa Utama | 2025 | — |