Bill Gates

Bill Gates came from a family of entrepreneurship and high-spirited liveliness. William Henry Gates III was

born in Seattle, Washington on October 28th, 1955. His father, William H. Gates II, is a

Seattle attorney. His late mother, Mary Gates, was a schoolteacher, University

of Washington regent, and chairwoman of United Way

International.

He had an early interest in software and began programming computers at the age of thirteen. In 1973, Bill Gates became a student at Harvard University, where he meet

Steve Ballmer (now Microsoft's chief executive officer). While still a

Harvard undergraduate, Bill Gates wrote a version of the programming language BASIC for the MITS Alatair

microcomputer.

In 1975, before graduation Gates left Harvard to form Microsoft with his childhood friend Paul

Allen. The pair planned to develop software for the newly emerging personal computer

market.

Bill Gate's company Microsoft became famous for their computer

operating systems and killer business deals. For example, Bill

Gates talked IBM into letting Microsoft retain the licensing

rights to MS-DOS an operating system, that IBM needed for their

new personal computer. Gates proceeded to make a fortune from

the licensing of MS-DOS.

On November 10, 1983, at the Plaza Hotel in New York City,

Microsoft Corporation formally announced Microsoft windows,

a next-generation operating system.

On January 1, 1994, Bill Gates married Melinda French Gates.

They have three children.

Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda, have endowed the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

with more than $28.8 billion (as of January 2005) to support philanthropic initiatives in

the areas of global health and learning.

Bill Gates Philanthropist