A textbook or coursebook (UK English) is a manual of instruction in any branch of study. Textbooks are produced according to the demands of educational institutions. Although most textbooks are only published in printed format, many are now available as online electronic books and increasingly in scanned format in P2P networks.

History

The ancient Greeks wrote ''texts'' intended for education. The modern textbook has its roots in the standardization made possible by the printing press. Johannes Gutenberg himself may have printed editions of Ars Minor, a schoolbook on Latin grammar by Aelius Donatus. Early textbooks were used by tutors and teachers, who used the books as instructional aids (e.g.,alphabet books), as well as individuals who taught themselves.

The Greek philosopher Socrates (469-399 B.C.) lamented the loss of knowledge because the media of transmission were changing. Before the invention of the Greek alphabet 2,500 years ago, knowledge and stories were recited aloud, much like Homer's epic poem The Odyssey.

The new technology of writing meant stories no longer needed to be memorized, a development Socrates feared would weaken the Greeks' mental capacities for memorizing and retelling. (Paradoxically, we know about Socrates' concerns only because they were written down by his student Plato in his famous Dialogues.)

The next revolution for books came with the 15th-century invention of printing with changeable type. The invention is attributed to German metalsmith Johannes Gutenberg, who cast type in molds using a melted metal alloy and constructed a wooden-screw printing press to transfer the image onto paper.

Gutenberg's first and only large-scale printing effort was the now iconic Gutenberg Bible in the 1450s — a Latin translation from the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament, copies of which can be viewed on the British Library Web site www.bl.uk. Gutenberg's invention made mass production of texts possible for the first time. Although the Gutenberg Bible itself was stratospherically expensive, printed books began to spread widely over European trade routes during the next 50 years, and by the 16th century printed books had become more widely accessible and less costly.

Compulsory education and the subsequent growth of schooling in Europe led to the printing of many standardized texts for children. Textbooks have become the primary teaching instrument for most children since the 19th century. Two textbooks of historical significance in United States schooling were the 18th century New England Primer and the 19th century McGuffey Readers.

Technological advances change the way people interact with textbooks. Online and digital materials are making it increasingly easy for students to access materials other than the traditional print textbook. Students now have access to electronic and PDF books, online tutoring systems and video lectures.

Most notably, an increasing number of authors are foregoing commercial publishers and offering their textbooks under a creative commons or other open license. The New York Times recently endorsed the use of free, open, digital textbooks in the editorial "That textbook costs how much?"

Market

The "broken market"

The textbook market does not operate in exactly the same manner as most consumer markets. First, the end consumers (students) do not select the product, and the product is not purchased by faculty or professors. Therefore, price is removed from the purchasing decision, giving the producer (publishers) disproportionate market power to set prices high. Similarities are found in the pharmaceutical industry, which sells its wares to doctors, rather than the ultimate end-user (i.e. patient).

This fundamental difference in the market is often cited as the primary reason that prices are out of control. The term "Broken Market" first appeared in Economist James Koch's analysis of the market commissioned by the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance.

This situation is exacerbated by the lack of competition in the textbook market. Consolidation in the past few decades has reduced the number of major textbook companies from around 30 to just a handful. Consequently, there is less competition than there used to be, and the high cost of starting up keeps new companies from entering.

New editions & the used book market

Students seek relief from rising prices through the purchase of used copies of textbooks, which tend to be less expensive. Most college bookstores offer used copies of textbooks at lower prices. Most bookstores will also buy used copies back from students at the end of a term if the book is going to be re-used at the school. Books that are not being re-used at the school are often purchased by an off-campus wholesaler for 0-30% of the new cost, for distribution to other bookstores where the books will be sold. Textbook companies have countered this by encouraging faculty to assign homework that must be done on the publisher's website. If a student has a new textbook then he or she can use the pass code in the book to register on the site. If the student has purchased a used textbook then he or she must pay money directly to the publisher in order to access the website and complete assigned homework.

Students who look beyond the campus bookstore can typically find lower prices. With the ISBN or title, author and edition, most textbooks can be located through online used book sellers or retailers.

Most leading textbook companies publish a new edition every 3 or 4 years, more frequently in math & science. Harvard economics chair James K. Stock has stated that new editions are often not about significant improvements to the content. "New editions are to a considerable extent simply another tool used by publishers and textbook authors to maintain their revenue stream, that is, to keep up prices," A study conducted by The Student PIRGs found that a new edition costs 12% more than a new copy of previous edition, and 58% more than a used copy of the previous edition. Textbook publishers maintain these new editions are driven by faculty demand. The Student PIRGs' study found that 76% of faculty said new editions were justified “half of the time or less” and 40% said they were justified “rarely” or “never.” The PIRG study has been criticized by publishers, who argue that the report contains factual inaccuracies regarding the annual average cost of textbooks per student.

The Student PIRGs also point out that recent emphasis on electronic textbooks, or "eTextbooks," does not always save students money. Even though the book costs less up-front, the student will not recover any of the cost through resale.

Bundling

Another publishing industry practice that has been highly criticized is "bundling," or shrink-wrapping supplemental items into a textbook. Supplemental items range from CD-ROMs and workbooks to online passcodes and bonus material. Students do not always have the option to purchase these items separately, and often the one-time-use supplements destroy the resale value of the textbook.

According to the Student PIRGs, the typical bundled textbook is 10%-50% more than an unbundled textbook, and 65% of professors said they “rarely” or “never” use the bundled items in their courses.

A 2005 Government Accountability Office (GAO) Report found that the production of these supplemental items was the primary cause of rapidly increasing prices:

While publishers, retailers, and wholesalers all play a role in textbook pricing, the primary factor contributing to increases in the price of textbooks has been the increased investment publishers have made in new products to enhance instruction and learning...While wholesalers, retailers, and others do not question the quality of these materials, they have expressed concern that the publishers’ practice of packaging supplements with a textbook to sell as one unit limits the opportunity students have to purchase less expensive used books....If publishers continue to increase these investments, particularly in technology, the cost to produce a textbook is likely to continue to increase in the future.

Bundling has also been used as a means of segmenting the used book market. Each combination of a textbook and supplemental items receives a separate ISBN. A single textbook could therefore have dozens of ISBNs that denote different combinations of supplements packaged with that particular book. When a bookstore attempts to track down used copies of textbooks, they will search for the ISBN the course instructor orders, which will locate only a subset of the copies of the textbook.

Legislation on the state and federal level seeks to limit the practice of bundling, by requiring publishers to offer all components separately. Publishers have testified in favor of bills including this provision, but only in the case that the provision exempts the loosely defined category of "integrated textbooks." The Federal bill only exempts 3rd party materials in integrated textbooks, however publisher lobbyists have attempted to create a loophole through this definition in state bills.

Price disclosure

Given that the problem of high textbook prices is linked to the "broken" economics of the market, requiring publishers to disclose textbook prices to faculty is a solution pursued by a number of legislatures. By inserting price into sales interactions, this regulation will supposedly make the economic forces operate more normally.

No data suggests that this is in fact true. However, The Student PIRGs have found that publishers actively withhold pricing information from faculty, making it difficult to obtain. Their most recent study found that 77% of faculty say publisher sales representatives do not volunteer prices, and only 40% got an answer when they directly asked. Furthermore, the study found that 23% of faculty rated publisher websites as “informative and easy to use” and less than half said they typically listed the price.

The US Congress passed a law in the 2008 Higher Education Opportunity Act that would require price disclosure. Legislation requiring price disclosure has passed in Connecticut, Washington, Minnesota, Oregon, Arizona, Oklahoma, and Colorado. Publishers are currently supporting price disclosure mandates, though they insist that the "suggested retail price" should be disclosed, rather than the actual price the publisher would get for the book.

Used textbook market

Once a textbook is purchased from a retailer for the first time, there are several ways a student can sell his/her textbooks back at the end of the semester. Students can sell to 1) the college/university bookstore; 2) fellow students; or 3) a number of online Web sites or student swap service.

Campus buyback

As for buyback on a specific campus, faculty decisions largely determine how much a student receives. If a professor chooses to use the same book the following semester, even if it is a custom text, designed specifically for an individual instructor, bookstores often buy the book back. The GAO report found that, generally, if a book is in good condition and will be used on the campus again the next term, bookstores will pay students 50 percent of the original price paid. If the bookstore has not received a faculty order for the book at the end of the term and the edition is still current, they may offer students the wholesale price of the book, which could range from 5 to 35 percent of the new retail price, according to the GAO report.

When students resell their textbooks during campus “buyback” periods, these textbooks are often sold into the national used textbook distribution chain. If a textbook is not going to be used on campus for the next semester of courses then many times the college bookstore will sell that book to a national used book company. The used book company then resells the book to another college bookstore. Finally, that book is sold as used to a student at another college at a price that is typically 75% of the new book price. At each step, a markup is applied to the book to enable the respective companies to continue to operate.

Student to student sales

Students can also sell or trade textbooks among themselves. After completing a course, sellers will often seek out members of the next enrolling class, people who are likely to be interested in purchasing the required books. This may be done by posting flyers to advertise the sale of the books or simply soliciting individuals who are shopping in the college bookstore for the same titles. Many larger schools have independent websites set up for the purpose of facilitating such trade. These often operate much like digital classified ads, enabling students to list their items for sale and browse for those they wish to acquire.

Student online marketplaces

Online marketplaces are one of the two major types of online websites students can use to sell used textbooks. Online marketplaces may have an online auction format or may allow the student to list their books for a fixed price. In either case, the student must create the listing for each book themselves and wait for a buyer to order, making the use of marketplaces a more passive way of selling used textbooks. Unlike campus buyback and online book buyers, students are unlikely to sell all their books to one buyer using online marketplaces, and will likely have to send out multiple books individually.

Online book buyers

Online book buyers buy textbooks, and sometimes other types of books, with the aim of reselling them for a profit. Like online marketplaces, online book buyers operate year-round, giving students the opportunity to sell their books even when campus "buyback" periods are not in effect. Students enter the ISBN numbers of the books they wish to sell and receive a price quote or offer. These online book buyers often offer "free shipping" (which in actuality is built into the offer for the book), and allow students to sell multiple books to the same source. Because online book buyers are buying books for resale, the prices they offer may be lower than students can get on online marketplaces. However, their prices are competitive, and they tend to focus on the convenience of their service. Some even claim that buying used textbooks online and selling them to online book buyers has a lower total cost than even textbook rental services.

Textbook exchanges

In response to escalating textbook prices, limited competition, and to provide a more efficient system to connect buyers and sellers together, online textbook exchanges were developed. Most of today's sites handle buyer and seller payments, and usually deduct a small commission only after the sale is completed.

According to textbook author Henry L. Roediger (and Wadsworth Publishing Company senior editor Vicki Knight), the used textbook market is illegitimate, and entirely to blame for the rising costs of textbooks. As methods of "dealing with this problem", he recommends making previous editions of textbooks obsolete, binding the textbook with other materials, and passing laws to prevent the sale of used books. The concept is not unlike the limited licensing approach for computer software, which places rigid restrictions on resale and reproduction. The intent is to make users understand that the content of any textbook is the intellectual property of the author and/or the publisher, and that as such, subject to copyright. Obviously, this idea is completely opposed to the millennia-old tradition of the sale of used books, and would make that entire industry illegal.

Rental programs

According to Nicole Allen of The Student PIRGs, renting is “the best short-term” way to lower textbook costs. PIRG data found that students using existing textbook rental services pay $130 to $240 per year plus some course materials, while students attending public four-year colleges currently pay an average of $800 to $900 to purchase their textbooks each year.

More than 20 schools offer textbook rental programs, including East Los Angeles College, The University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Southern Illinois University, and Eastern Illinois University's new, state of the art facility.

Open textbooks

The latest trend in textbooks is "open textbooks." An open textbook is a free, openly-licensed textbook offered online by its author(s). According to PIRG, a number of textbooks already exist, and are being used at schools such as the MIT and Harvard. A 2010 study published found that open textbooks offer a viable and attractive means to meet faculty and student needs while offering savings of approximately 80% compared to traditional textbook options.

Although the largest question seems to be who is going to pay to write them, several state policies suggest that public investment in open textbooks might make sense. To offer another perspective, any jurisdiction might find itself challenged to find sufficient numbers of credible academics who would be willing to undertake the effort of creating an open textbook without realistic compensation, in order to make such a proposal work.

The other challenge involves the reality of publishing, which is that textbooks with good sales and profitability subsidize the creation and publication of low demand but believed to be necessary textbooks. Subsidies skew markets and the elimination of subsidies is disruptive; in the case of low demand textbooks the possibilities following subsidy removal include any or all of the following: higher retail prices, a switch to open textbooks, a reduction of the number of titles published.

On the other hand, independent open textbook authoring and publishing models are developing. Most notably, the startup publisher Flat World Knowledge already has dozens of college-level open textbooks that are used by more than 900 institutions in 44 countries. Their innovative business model is to offer the open textbook free online, and then sell ancillary products that students are likely to buy if prices are reasonable - print copies, study guides, ePub, .Mobi (Kindle), PDF download, etc. Flat World Knowledge compensates its authors with royalties on these sales. Generated revenue is also used to fund high-quality publishing activities, making the Flat World financial model sustainable. Flat World Knowledge intends to have open textbooks available for the 125 highest-enrolled courses on college campuses within the next few years.

CK-12 FlexBooks are the open textbooks designed for United States K-12 courses. CK-12 FlexBooks are designed to facilitate conformance to national and United States and individual state textbook standards. CK-12 FlexBooks are licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license, are easy to update, and easy to customize. CK-12 FlexBooks are free to use online and offer formats suitable for use on portable personal reading devices and computers - both online and offline. Formats for both iPad and Kindle are offered. School districts may select a title as is or customize the open textbook to meet local instructional standards. The file may be then accessed electronically or printed using any print on demand service without paying a royalty, saving 80% or more when compared to traditional textbook options. An example print on demand open textbook title, "College Algebra" by Stitz & Zeager through Lulu is 608 pages, royalty free, and costs about $20 ordered one at a time (March, 2011). ''(Any print on demand service could be used - this is just an example. School districts could easily negotiate even lower prices for bulk purchases to be printed in their own communities.)'' Teacher's editions are available for educators and parents. Titles have been authored by various individuals and organizations and are vetted for quality prior to inclusion in the CK-12 catalog. An effort is underway to map state educational standards correlations. Stanford University provided a number of titles in use. CK-12 Foundation is a non-profit organization with a mission to reduce the cost of textbook materials for the K-12 market both in the U.S. and worldwide using a standards driven, open-licensed, web-based, collaborative content aggregation model.

Curriki is another modular K-12 content non-profit "empowering educators to deliver and share curricula." Selected Curriki materials are also correlated to U.S. state educational standards. Some Curriki content has been collected into open textbooks and some may be used for modular lessons or special topics.

Wikibooks

Wikibooks is a Wikimedia project that aims to provide and promote the editing of open-content textbooks. Wikibooks is for textbooks, annotated texts, instructional guides, and manuals. These materials can be used in a traditional classroom, an accredited or respected institution, a home-school environment, as part of a Wikiversity course or for self-learning. As a general rule only instructional books are suitable for inclusion. Most types of books, both fiction and non-fiction, are not allowed on Wikibooks, unless they are instructional. The use of literary elements, such as allegory or fables as instructional tools can be permitted in some situations.

Although the project does not permit verbatim copies of pre-existing works (those would be covered by WikiSource), it does permit annotated texts, which are a kind of text that includes an original text within it and serves as a guide to reading or studying that text. Annotated editions of previously published source texts may only be written if the source text is compatible with the project's license.

MIT OpenCourseWare

Provides several open textbooks.

International market pricing

Similar to the issue of reimportation of pharmaceuticals into the U.S. market, the GAO report also highlights a similar phenomenon in textbook distribution. Retailers and publishers have expressed concern about the reimportation of lower-priced textbooks from international locations. Specifically, they cited the ability students have to purchase books from online distribution channels outside the United States at lower prices, which may result in a loss of sales for U.S. retailers. Additionally, the availability of lower-priced textbooks through these channels has heightened distrust and frustration among students regarding textbook prices, and college stores find it difficult to explain why their textbook prices are higher, according to the National Association of College Stores. Retailers and publishers have also been concerned that some U.S. retailers may have engaged in reimportation on a large scale by ordering textbooks for entire courses at lower prices from international distribution channels. While the 1998 Supreme Court decision Quality King v. L'anza protects the reimportation of copyrighted materials under the first-sale doctrine, textbook publishers have still attempted to prevent the U.S. sale of international editions by enforcing contracts which forbid foreign wholesalers from selling to American distributors. Concerned about the effects of differential pricing on college stores, the National Association of College Stores has called on publishers to stop the practice of selling textbooks at lower prices outside the United States. For example, some U.S. booksellers arrange for drop-shipments in foreign countries which are then re-shipped to America where the books can be sold online at used prices (for a "new" unopened book). The authors often getting half-royalties instead of full-royalties, minus the charges for returned books from bookstores.

Production

Cost distribution

According to the National Association of College Stores, the entire cost of the book is justified by expenses, with typically 11.7% of the price of a new book going to the author's royalties (or a committee of editors at the publishing house), 22.7% going to the store, and 64.6% going to the publisher. The store and publisher amounts are slightly higher for Canada. Bookstores and used-book vendors profit from the resale of textbooks on the used market, with publishers only earning profits on sales of new textbooks.

Research

According to the GAO study published July 2005:

Following closely behind annual increases in tuition and fees at postsecondary institutions, college textbook and supply prices have risen at twice the rate of annual inflation over the last two decades.

Rising at an average of 6 percent each year since academic year 1987-1988, compared with overall average price increases of 3 percent per year, college textbook and supply prices trailed tuition and fee increases, which averaged 7 percent per year. Since December 1986, textbook and supply prices have nearly tripled, increasing by 186 percent, while tuition and fees increased by 240 percent and overall prices grew by 72 percent. While increases in textbook and supply prices have followed increases in tuition and fees, the cost of textbooks and supplies for degree-seeking students as a percentage of tuition and fees varies by the type of institution attended. For example, the average estimated cost of books and supplies per first-time, full-time student for academic year 2003-2004 was $898 at 4-year public institutions, or about 26 percent of the cost of tuition and fees. At 2-year public institutions, where low-income students are more likely to pursue a degree program and tuition and fees are lower, the average estimated cost of books and supplies per first-time, full-time student was $886 in academic year 2003-2004, representing almost three-quarters of the cost of tuition and fees.

According to the 2nd edition of a study by the United States Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG) published in February 2005: ''"Textbook prices are increasing at more than four times the inflation rate for all finished goods, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Producer Price Index. The wholesale prices charged by textbook publishers have jumped 62 percent since 1994, while prices charged for all finished goods increased only 14 percent. Similarly, the prices charged by publishers for general books increased just 19 percent during the same time period."''

According to the 2007 edition of the College Board’s Trend in College Pricing Report published October 2007: ''"College costs continue to rise and federal student aid has shown slower growth when adjusted for inflation, while textbooks, as a percentage of total college costs, have remained steady at about 5 percent."''

K-12 textbooks

In most U.S. K-12 public schools, a local school board votes on which textbooks to purchase from a selection of books that have been approved by the state Department of Education. Teachers receive the books to give to the students for each subject. Teachers are usually not required to use textbooks, however, and many prefer to use other materials instead. Textbook publishing in the U.S. is a business primarily aimed at large states. This is due to state purchasing controls over the books. The Texas State Board of Education spends in excess of $600 million annually on its central purchasing of textbooks.

High school

In recent years, high school textbooks of United States history have come under increasing criticism. Authors such as Howard Zinn (''A People's History of the United States''), Gilbert T. Sewall (''Textbooks: Where the Curriculum Meets the Child'') and James W. Loewen (''Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong''), make the claim that U.S. history textbooks contain mythical untruths and omissions, which paint a whitewashed picture that bears little resemblance to what most students learn in universities. Inaccurately retelling history, through textbooks or other literature, has been practiced in many societies, from ancient Rome to the Soviet Union (USSR) and the People's Republic of China. The content of history textbooks is often determined by the political forces of state adoption boards and ideological pressure groups.

Science textbooks have been the source of ongoing debates and have come under scrutiny from several organizations. The presentation or inclusion of controversial scientific material has been debated in several court cases. Poorly designed textbooks have been cited as contributing to declining grades in mathematics and science in the United States and organizations such as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) have criticized the layout, presentation, and amount of material given in textbooks.

Discussions of textbooks have been included on creation and evolution in the public education debate. The ''Smith v. Board of School Commissioners of Mobile County'' case brought forward a debate about scientific fact being presented in textbooks.

In his book, ''Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!'', the late physics Nobel Prize laureate Richard P. Feynman described his experiences as a member of a committee that evaluated science textbooks. At some instances, there were nonsensical examples to illustrate physical phenomena; then a company sent — for reasons of timing — a textbook that contained blank pages, which even got good critiques. Feynman himself experienced attempts at bribery.

Mathematics

Largely in the US, but increasingly in other nations, K-12 Mathematics textbooks have reflected the controversies of new math and reform mathematics which have sought to replace traditional mathematics in what have been called the math wars. Traditional texts, still favored in Asia and other areas, merely taught the same time-tested mathematics that most adults have learned. By contrast "progressive" approaches seek to address problems in social inequity with approaches that often incorporate principles of constructivism and discovery. Texts such as TERC and CMP discourage or omit standard mathematics methods and concepts such as long division and lowest common denominators. For example an index entry to multiply fractions would lead to "devise your own method to multiply fractions which work on these examples", and the formula for the area of a circle would be an exercise for a student to derive rather than including it in the student text. By the 2000s, while some districts were still adopting the more novel methods, others had abandoned them as unworkable.

Higher education

In the U.S., college and university textbooks are chosen by the professor teaching the course, or by the department as a whole. Students are typically responsible for obtaining their own copies of the books used in their courses, although alternatives to owning textbooks, such as textbook rental services and library reserve copies of texts, are available in some instances.

In some European countries, such as Sweden or Spain, students attending institutions of higher education pay for textbooks themselves, although higher education is free of charge otherwise.

With higher education costs on the rise, many students are becoming sensitive to every aspect of college pricing, including textbooks, and in many cases amount to one tenth of tuition costs. The 2005 Government Accountability Office report on college textbooks said that since the 1980s, textbook and supply prices have risen twice the rate of inflation in the past two decades. A 2005 PIRG study found that textbooks cost students $900 per year, and that prices increased four times the rate of inflation over the past decade. A June 2007 Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance (ACSFA) report, “Turn the Page,” reported that the average U.S. student spends $700–$1000 per year on textbooks.

While many groups have assigned blame to publishers, bookstores or faculty, the ACSFA also found that assigning blame to any one party—faculty, colleges, bookstores or publishers—for current textbook costs is unproductive and without merit. The report called on all parties within the industry to work together to find productive solutions, which included a movement toward open textbooks and other lower-cost digital solutions.

Textbook prices are considerably higher in Law School. Students ordinarily pay close to $200 for case books consisting of cases available free online.

Textbook bias on controversial topics

In cases of history, science, current events, and political textbooks, the writer might be biased towards one way or another. Topics such as actions of a country, presidential actions, and scientific theories are common potential biases.

See also

Casebook - A special type of textbook used in law schools in the United States.

Japanese textbook controversy

Pakistani textbooks controversy

Kanawha County textbook controversy

Sourcebook – collection of texts, often used in social sciences and humanities in the United States

Wikibooks - A sister project to Wikipedia whose goal is to create textbooks.

Workbook - Usually filled with practice problems, where the answers can be written directly in the book.

Problem book - A textbook, usually graduate level, organized as a series of problems and full solutions.

Open textbook - More information about open textbook options.

References

Further reading

.

Category:Books by type

ast:Llibru de testu ca:Llibre de text cs:Učebnice da:Lærebog de:Lehrbuch es:Libro de texto eo:Lernolibro eu:Ikasliburu fa:کتاب درسی fr:Manuel scolaire ko:교과서 it:Libro di testo he:ספר לימוד lv:Mācību grāmata lt:Vadovėlis nl:Handboek ja:教科書 no:Skolebøker pl:Podręcznik szkolny pt:Livro didático ru:Учебник simple:Textbook sv:Lärobok tg:Китоби дарсӣ uk:Підручник vi:Sách giáo khoa zh-yue:教科書 zh:教科書

name	Richard Baraniuk
nationality	Canadian, American
fields	Electrical engineer, Mathematician
workplaces	Rice University
alma mater	University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign University of Wisconsin-Madison University of Manitoba
doctoral advisor	Douglas L. Jones
known for	Wavelet theory, Compressive sensing, Open education
awards	University of Illinois ECE Young Alumni Achievement Award (2000) Fellow of the IEEE (2001) One of Edutopia Magazine's Daring Dozen educators (2007) Wavelet Pioneer Award from SPIE (2008) Internet Pioneer Award from Berkman Center for Internet & Society (2008) World Technology Award for Education (2009) Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2009) }}

Richard G. Baraniuk is the Victor E. Cameron Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rice University.

Academic biography

Dr. Baraniuk received a B.Sc. from the University of Manitoba in 1987 and a M.Sc. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1988. He earned a Ph.D. in electrical engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1992 under the supervision of Douglas L. Jones. After spending 1992-1993 at Ecole Normale Supérieure in Lyon, France, he joined Rice University.

Research

Baraniuk has been active in the development of digital signal processing and image processing systems, with numerous contributions to the theory of wavelets and compressive sensing. His work with Kevin Kelly on the Rice "single-pixel camera" applied the ideas of compressive sensing to design a novel imaging system that was selected by Technology Review Magazine as a TR10 Top 10 Emerging Technology in 2007.

Open education and Connexions

Baraniuk is a founder and leader of the open education movement, which aims to share knowledge and teaching materials freely over the internet. In 1999, Baraniuk launched Connexions, one of the first initiatives to offer free, open source textbooks via the web. Connexions continues to be one of the largest and most used open education platforms worldwide.

Baraniuk's own textbook, "Signals and Systems," has generated 4.5 million page views including a very popular translation into Spanish. Connexions has also provided an all-digital platform to relaunch the Rice University Press. In 2006 Baraniuk delivered a lecture on Connexions at TED. He has been an active popularizer of open education and was also one of the framers of the Cape Town Open Education Declaration.

Awards and honors

Baraniuk has received numerous awards, including a NATO postdoctoral fellowship from NSERC in 1992, the National Young Investigator award from the National Science Foundation in 1994, a Young Investigator Award from the Office of Naval Research in 1995, the Rosenbaum Fellowship from the Isaac Newton Institute of Cambridge University in 1998, the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign ECE Young Alumni Achievement Award in 2000, and the Wavelet Pioneer Award from SPIE in 2008.

Connexions received the Tech Museum Laureate Award from the Tech Museum of Innovation in 2006, and Baraniuk was selected as one of Edutopia Magazine's Daring Dozen educators in 2007. In 2008, Baraniuk received the Internet Pioneer Award from Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and in 2009 he received the World Technology Award for education.

Baraniuk was elected a Fellow of the IEEE in 2001 and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2009.

References

External links

Baraniuk's web page at Rice.

Category:Year of birth missing (living people) Category:Living people Category:American electrical engineers Category:Rice University faculty Category:University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni Category:University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign alumni

Name	Kendrick Lamar
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Kendrick Lamar
Alias	K. Dot
Birth date	June 17, 1987
Origin	Compton, California, U.S.
Occupation	Rapper
Genre	Hip hop, Conscious hip hop
Years active	2003–present
Label	Top Dawg Entertainment
Associated acts	Black Hippy, Schoolboy Q, Jay Rock, Ab-Soul, J. Cole
Website	Official website }}

Kendrick Lamar (born June 17, 1987) formerly known as K. Dot, is an American rapper from Compton, California. His music is influenced by Tupac Shakur, Nas, Jay-Z, Kanye West and DMX. He is a member of Black Hippy along with Jay Rock, Ab-Soul and Schoolboy Q. In 2009 he released an EP titled ''The Kendrick Lamar EP'', a highly acclaimed mixtape in 2010 titled ''O(verly) D(edicated)'' and released his third solo project ''Section.80'' on July 2, 2011.

In August 2011, Lamar was onstage with Snoop Dogg, Kurupt and Game, the three of them crowned him the "New King of the West Coast"

Biography

Early life and career beginnings

In high school Lamar was a "straight A" student. In 2003 at the age of 16 he released his first mixtape, ''Youngest Head Nigga In Charge'' under the name K. Dot. The mixtape was able to garner enough attention for Lamar to get a record deal with Top Dawg Entertainment. He then released a twenty-six track mixtape two years later titled ''Training Day''. In 2008 Lamar made a cameo appearance on Jay Rock's "All My Life (In the Ghetto)" music video singing when the chorus comes in. After receiving a co-sign from Lil Wayne, he released his third mixtape in 2009 titled ''C4'', heavily themed around ''Tha Carter III'' LP. Soon after he decided to drop his stage name K. Dot and go by his real name. This resulted in him releasing a self-titled EP; ''The Kendrick Lamar EP'' in late 2009.

2010–present: ''O(verly) D(edicated)'' and ''Section.80''

In 2010 he toured with Tech N9ne and Jay Rock on ''The Independent Grind'' tour. On September 23, 2010 he released ''O(verly) D(edicated)'' a highly acclaimed mixtape that included a song titled "Ignorance is Bliss" in which he glorifies gangsta rap and street crime but ends each verse with "ignorance is bliss" giving the message "we know not what we do". It was that song specifically that made legendary hip hop producer Dr. Dre want to work with Lamar. This led to him working with Dre and Snoop Dogg on Dre's ''Detox'' album. He has hinted at signing to Aftermath Entertainment. He and J. Cole plan to release a collaboration mixtape in the future. In January 2011 Lamar said his debut album was 90% finished. He was featured on XXL Magazine's 2011 Freshman cover along with Cyhi Da Prynce, Yelawolf and Big K.R.I.T. among others.

On July 2nd, 2011 Lamar released his third solo project ''Section.80'' to critical acclaim. It included features from GLC, Colin Munroe, Schoolboy Q, Ab-Soul and production from longtime collaborator Sounwave, Wyldfyer, Terrace Martin, J. Cole and more. On the topic of whether ''Section.80'' would be an album or a mixtape Lamar said "I treat every project like it’s an album anyway. It’s not gonna be nothing leftover. I never do nothing like that. These are my leftover songs ya’ll can have ‘em, nah. I’m gonna put my best out. My best effort. I’m tryna look for an album in 2012". The first single for ''Section.80'' was 'the J. Cole produced track "HiiiPower", the concept was to further explain the HiiiPower movement. ''Section.80'' went on to sell over 5000 copies in its first week without any television or radio coverage and received many very positive reviews. In the summer of 2011, Kendrick Lamar appeared on Game's ''The R.E.D. Album'' and Tech N9ne's ''All 6's and 7's'' respectively.

Personal life

Lamar claims he has seen relatives that have died in his dreams for years and on one night in 2010 Tupac Shakur came to him with the message of "Keep doing what you're doing, keep my music alive" this is what he says inspired him to write much of section 80

Discography

Studio albums

''Section.80'' (2011)

EPs

''Kendrick Lamar EP'' (2009)

Mixtapes

''Youngest Head Nigga in Charge(2003)

''Training Day'' (2005)

''C4'' (2009)

''Overly Dedicated'' (2010)

''Untitled'' (with J. Cole) (TBA)

Collaborations

''Black Hippy'' (with Black Hippy)

References

External links

Kendrick Lamar Blog

Category:Living people Category:African American rappers Category:1987 births

name	Bill Gates
birth date	October 28, 1955
birth place	Seattle, Washington, U.S.
birth name	William Henry Gates III
occupation	Chairman of MicrosoftChairman of CorbisCo-Chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates FoundationDirector of Berkshire HathawayCEO of Cascade Investment
years active	1975–present
nationality	American
net worth	US$56 billion (2011)
religion	Agnostic
spouse
children	3
residence	Medina, Washington, U.S.
alma mater	Harvard University (Dropout)
website	Bill Gates
signature	BillGates Signature.svg
parents	William H. Gates, Sr.Mary Maxwell Gates }}

William Henry "Bill" Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate, philanthropist, author and chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen. He is consistently ranked among the world's wealthiest people and was the wealthiest overall from 1995 to 2009, excluding 2008, when he was ranked third. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of CEO and chief software architect, and remains the largest individual shareholder, with more than 8 percent of the common stock. He has also authored or co-authored several books.

Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. Although he is admired by many, a number of industry insiders criticize his business tactics, which they consider anti-competitive, an opinion which has in some cases been upheld by the courts. In the later stages of his career, Gates has pursued a number of philanthropic endeavors, donating large amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, established in 2000.

Gates stepped down as chief executive officer of Microsoft in January 2000. He remained as chairman and created the position of chief software architect. In June 2006, Gates announced that he would be transitioning from full-time work at Microsoft to part-time work, and full-time work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He gradually transferred his duties to Ray Ozzie, chief software architect, and Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer. Gates' last full-time day at Microsoft was June 27, 2008. He remains at Microsoft as non-executive chairman.

Early life

Gates was born in Seattle, Washington, to William H. Gates, Sr. and Mary Maxwell Gates, of English, German, and Scotch-Irish descent. His family was upper middle class; his father was a prominent lawyer, his mother served on the board of directors for First Interstate BancSystem and the United Way, and her father, J. W. Maxwell, was a national bank president. Gates has one elder sister, Kristi (Kristianne), and one younger sister, Libby. He was the fourth of his name in his family, but was known as William Gates III or "Trey" because his father had the "II" suffix. Early on in his life, Gates' parents had a law career in mind for him. When Gates was young, his family regularly attended a Congregational church.

At 13 he enrolled in the Lakeside School, an exclusive preparatory school. When he was in the eighth grade, the Mothers Club at the school used proceeds from Lakeside School's rummage sale to buy an Teletype Model 33 ASR terminal and a block of computer time on a General Electric (GE) computer for the school's students. Gates took an interest in programming the GE system in BASIC, and was excused from math classes to pursue his interest. He wrote his first computer program on this machine: an implementation of tic-tac-toe that allowed users to play games against the computer. Gates was fascinated by the machine and how it would always execute software code perfectly. When he reflected back on that moment, he said, "There was just something neat about the machine." After the Mothers Club donation was exhausted, he and other students sought time on systems including DEC PDP minicomputers. One of these systems was a PDP-10 belonging to Computer Center Corporation (CCC), which banned four Lakeside students—Gates, Paul Allen, Ric Weiland, and Kent Evans—for the summer after it caught them exploiting bugs in the operating system to obtain free computer time.

At the end of the ban, the four students offered to find bugs in CCC's software in exchange for computer time. Rather than use the system via Teletype, Gates went to CCC's offices and studied source code for various programs that ran on the system, including programs in FORTRAN, LISP, and machine language. The arrangement with CCC continued until 1970, when the company went out of business. The following year, Information Sciences, Inc. hired the four Lakeside students to write a payroll program in COBOL, providing them computer time and royalties. After his administrators became aware of his programming abilities, Gates wrote the school's computer program to schedule students in classes. He modified the code so that he was placed in classes with mostly female students. He later stated that "it was hard to tear myself away from a machine at which I could so unambiguously demonstrate success." At age 17, Gates formed a venture with Allen, called Traf-O-Data, to make traffic counters based on the Intel 8008 processor. In early 1973, Bill Gates served as a congressional page in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Gates graduated from Lakeside School in 1973. He scored 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT and enrolled at Harvard College in the autumn of 1973. While at Harvard, he met Steve Ballmer, who later succeeded Gates as CEO of Microsoft.

In his sophomore year, Gates devised an algorithm for pancake sorting as a solution to one of a series of unsolved problems presented in a combinatorics class by Harry Lewis, one of his professors. Gates' solution held the record as the fastest version for over thirty years; its successor is faster by only one percent. His solution was later formalized in a published paper in collaboration with Harvard computer scientist Christos Papadimitriou.

Gates did not have a definite study plan while a student at Harvard and spent a lot of time using the school's computers. Gates remained in contact with Paul Allen, joining him at Honeywell during the summer of 1974. The following year saw the release of the MITS Altair 8800 based on the Intel 8080 CPU, and Gates and Allen saw this as the opportunity to start their own computer software company. He had talked this decision over with his parents, who were supportive of him after seeing how much Gates wanted to start a company.

Microsoft

BASIC

After reading the January 1975 issue of ''Popular Electronics'' that demonstrated the Altair 8800, Gates contacted Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), the creators of the new microcomputer, to inform them that he and others were working on a BASIC interpreter for the platform. In reality, Gates and Allen did not have an Altair and had not written code for it; they merely wanted to gauge MITS's interest. MITS president Ed Roberts agreed to meet them for a demo, and over the course of a few weeks they developed an Altair emulator that ran on a minicomputer, and then the BASIC interpreter. The demonstration, held at MITS's offices in Albuquerque, was a success and resulted in a deal with MITS to distribute the interpreter as Altair BASIC. Paul Allen was hired into MITS, and Gates took a leave of absence from Harvard to work with Allen at MITS in Albuquerque in November 1975. They named their partnership "Micro-Soft" and had their first office located in Albuquerque. Within a year, the hyphen was dropped, and on November 26, 1976, the trade name "Microsoft" was registered with the Office of the Secretary of the State of New Mexico. Gates never returned to Harvard to complete his studies.

Microsoft's BASIC was popular with computer hobbyists, but Gates discovered that a pre-market copy had leaked into the community and was being widely copied and distributed. In February 1976, Gates wrote an Open Letter to Hobbyists in the MITS newsletter saying that MITS could not continue to produce, distribute, and maintain high-quality software without payment. This letter was unpopular with many computer hobbyists, but Gates persisted in his belief that software developers should be able to demand payment. Microsoft became independent of MITS in late 1976, and it continued to develop programming language software for various systems. The company moved from Albuquerque to its new home in Bellevue, Washington on January 1, 1979.

During Microsoft's early years, all employees had broad responsibility for the company's business. Gates oversaw the business details, but continued to write code as well. In the first five years, Gates personally reviewed every line of code the company shipped, and often rewrote parts of it as he saw fit.

IBM partnership

In 1980, IBM approached Microsoft to write the BASIC interpreter for its upcoming personal computer, the IBM PC. When IBM's representatives mentioned that they needed an operating system, Gates referred them to Digital Research (DRI), makers of the widely used CP/M operating system. IBM's discussions with Digital Research went poorly, and they did not reach a licensing agreement. IBM representative Jack Sams mentioned the licensing difficulties during a subsequent meeting with Gates and told him to get an acceptable operating system. A few weeks later Gates proposed using 86-DOS (QDOS), an operating system similar to CP/M that Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products (SCP) had made for hardware similar to the PC. Microsoft made a deal with SCP to become the exclusive licensing agent, and later the full owner, of 86-DOS. After adapting the operating system for the PC, Microsoft delivered it to IBM as PC-DOS in exchange for a one-time fee of $50,000. Gates did not offer to transfer the copyright on the operating system, because he believed that other hardware vendors would clone IBM's system. They did, and the sales of MS-DOS made Microsoft a major player in the industry.

Gates oversaw Microsoft's company restructuring on June 25, 1981, which re-incorporated the company in Washington state and made Gates President of Microsoft and the Chairman of the Board.

Windows

Microsoft launched its first retail version of Microsoft Windows on November 20, 1985, and in August, the company struck a deal with IBM to develop a separate operating system called OS/2. Although the two companies successfully developed the first version of the new system, mounting creative differences undermined the partnership. Gates distributed an internal memo on May 16, 1991, announcing that the OS/2 partnership was over and Microsoft would shift its efforts to the Windows NT kernel development.

Management style

From Microsoft's founding in 1975 until 2006, Gates had primary responsibility for the company's product strategy. He aggressively broadened the company's range of products, and wherever Microsoft achieved a dominant position he vigorously defended it. He gained a reputation for being distant to others; as early as 1981 an industry executive complained in public that "Gates is notorious for not being reachable by phone and for not returning phone calls."

As an executive, Gates met regularly with Microsoft's senior managers and program managers. Firsthand accounts of these meetings describe him as verbally combative, berating managers for perceived holes in their business strategies or proposals that placed the company's long-term interests at risk. He often interrupted presentations with such comments as, "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!" and, "Why don't you just give up your options and join the Peace Corps?" The target of his outburst then had to defend the proposal in detail until, hopefully, Gates was fully convinced. When subordinates appeared to be procrastinating, he was known to remark sarcastically, "I'll do it over the weekend."

Gates' role at Microsoft for most of its history was primarily a management and executive role. However, he was an active software developer in the early years, particularly on the company's programming language products. He has not officially been on a development team since working on the TRS-80 Model 100, but wrote code as late as 1989 that shipped in the company's products. On June 15, 2006, Gates announced that he would transition out of his day-to-day role over the next two years to dedicate more time to philanthropy. He divided his responsibilities between two successors, placing Ray Ozzie in charge of day-to-day management and Craig Mundie in charge of long-term product strategy.

Antitrust litigation

Many decisions that led to antitrust litigation over Microsoft's business practices have had Gates' approval. In the 1998 ''United States v. Microsoft'' case, Gates gave deposition testimony that several journalists characterized as evasive. He argued with examiner David Boies over the contextual meaning of words like "compete", "concerned" and "we". ''BusinessWeek'' reported:

}}

Gates later said he had simply resisted attempts by Boies to mischaracterize his words and actions. As to his demeanor during the deposition, he said, "Did I fence with Boies? ... I plead guilty. Whatever that penalty is should be levied against me: rudeness to Boies in the first degree." Despite Gates's denials, the judge ruled that Microsoft had committed monopolization and tying, and blocking competition, both in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

Appearance in ads

Gates appeared in a series of ads to promote Microsoft in 2008. The first commercial, co-starring Jerry Seinfeld, is a 90-second talk between strangers as Seinfeld walks up on a discount shoe store (Shoe Circus) in a mall and notices Gates buying shoes inside. The salesman is trying to sell Mr. Gates shoes that are a size too big. As Gates is buying the shoes, he holds up his discount card, which uses a slightly altered version of his own mugshot of his arrest in New Mexico in 1977 for a traffic violation. As they are walking out of the mall, Seinfeld asks Gates if he has melded his mind to other developers, after getting a yes, he then asks if they are working on a way to make computers edible, again getting a yes. Some say that this is an homage to Seinfeld's own show about "nothing" (''Seinfeld''). In a second commercial in the series, Gates and Seinfeld are at the home of an average family trying to fit in with normal people.

Post-Microsoft

Since leaving Microsoft, Gates continues his philanthropy and, among other projects, purchased the video rights to the Messenger Lectures series called ''The Character of Physical Law'', given at Cornell University by Richard Feynman in 1964 and recorded by the BBC. The videos are available online to the public at Microsoft's Project Tuva.

In April 2010, Gates was invited to visit and speak at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he asked the students to take on the hard problems of the world in their futures.

Personal life

Gates married Melinda French on January 1, 1994. They have three children: daughter Jennifer Katharine Gates (born 1996), son Rory John Gates (born 1999), and daughter Phoebe Adele Gates (born 2002). The Gates's home is an earth-sheltered house in the side of a hill overlooking Lake Washington in Medina. According to King County public records, as of 2006 the total assessed value of the property (land and house) is $125 million, and the annual property tax is $991,000.

His estate has a swimming pool with an underwater music system, as well as a gym and a dining room.

Also among Gates' private acquisitions is the Codex Leicester, a collection of writings by Leonardo da Vinci, which Gates bought for $30.8 million at an auction in 1994. Gates is also known as an avid reader, and the ceiling of his large home library is engraved with a quotation from ''The Great Gatsby''. He also enjoys playing bridge, tennis, and golf.

Gates was number one on the Forbes 400 list from 1993 through to 2007 and number one on ''Forbes'' list of The World's Richest People from 1995 to 2007 and 2009. In 1999, Gates's wealth briefly surpassed $101 billion, causing the media to call him a "centibillionaire". Since 2000, the nominal value of his Microsoft holdings has declined due to a fall in Microsoft's stock price after the dot-com bubble burst and the multi-billion dollar donations he has made to his charitable foundations. In a May 2006 interview, Gates commented that he wished that he were not the richest man in the world because he disliked the attention it brought. Gates has several investments outside Microsoft, which in 2006 paid him a salary of $616,667 and $350,000 bonus totalling $966,667. He founded Corbis, a digital imaging company, in 1989. In 2004 he became a director of Berkshire Hathaway, the investment company headed by long-time friend Warren Buffett. In March 2010 Bill Gates was bumped down to the second wealthiest man behind Carlos Slim.

Philanthropy

Gates began to appreciate the expectations others had of him when public opinion mounted suggesting that he could give more of his wealth to charity. Gates studied the work of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, and in 1994 sold some of his Microsoft stock to create the William H. Gates Foundation. In 2000, Gates and his wife combined three family foundations into one to create the charitable Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is the largest transparently operated charitable foundation in the world. The foundation allows benefactors access to information regarding how its money is being spent, unlike other major charitable organizations such as the Wellcome Trust. The generosity and extensive philanthropy of David Rockefeller has been credited as a major influence. Gates and his father met with Rockefeller several times, and modeled their giving in part on the Rockefeller family's philanthropic focus, namely those global problems that are ignored by governments and other organizations. As of 2007, Bill and Melinda Gates were the second-most generous philanthropists in America, having given over $28 billion to charity.

The foundation was at the same time criticized because it invests assets that it has not yet distributed with the exclusive goal of maximizing return on investment. As a result, its investments include companies that have been charged with worsening poverty in the same developing countries where the Foundation is attempting to relieve poverty. These include companies that pollute heavily, and pharmaceutical companies that do not sell into the developing world. In response to press criticism, the foundation announced in 2007 a review of its investments, to assess social responsibility. It subsequently canceled the review and stood by its policy of investing for maximum return, while using voting rights to influence company practices.

Gates's wife urged people to learn a lesson from the philanthropic efforts of the Salwen family, which had sold its home and given away half of its value, as detailed in ''The Power of Half''. Gates and his wife invited Joan Salwen to Seattle to speak about what the family had done, and on December 9, 2010, Gates, investor Warren Buffett, and Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook's CEO) signed a promise they called the "Gates-Buffet Giving Pledge", in which they promised to donate to charity at least half of their wealth over the course of time.

Recognition

In 1987, Gates was officially declared a billionaire in the pages of Forbes' 400 Richest People in America issue, just days before his 32nd birthday. As the world's youngest self-made billionaire, he was worth $1.25 billion, over $900 million more than he'd been worth the year before, when he'd debuted on the list.

''Time'' magazine named Gates one of the 100 people who most influenced the 20th century, as well as one of the 100 most influential people of 2004, 2005, and 2006. ''Time'' also collectively named Gates, his wife Melinda and U2's lead singer Bono as the 2005 Persons of the Year for their humanitarian efforts. In 2006, he was voted eighth in the list of "Heroes of our time". Gates was listed in the ''Sunday Times'' power list in 1999, named CEO of the year by ''Chief Executive Officers magazine'' in 1994, ranked number one in the "Top 50 Cyber Elite" by ''Time'' in 1998, ranked number two in the ''Upside'' Elite 100 in 1999 and was included in ''The Guardian'' as one of the "Top 100 influential people in media" in 2001.

In 1994, he was honoured as the twentieth Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society. Gates has received honorary doctorates from Nyenrode Business Universiteit, Breukelen, The Netherlands, in 2000; the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, in 2002; Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, in 2005; Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in April 2007; Harvard University in June 2007; the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, in January 2008, and Cambridge University in June 2009. He was also made an honorary trustee of Peking University in 2007. Gates was also made an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in 2005, in addition to having entomologists name the Bill Gates flower fly, ''Eristalis gatesi'', in his honor.

In November 2006, he and his wife were awarded the Order of the Aztec Eagle for their philanthropic work around the world in the areas of health and education, particularly in Mexico, and specifically in the program "''Un país de lectores"''. In October 2009, it was announced that Gates will be awarded the 2010 Bower Award for Business Leadership of The Franklin Institute for his achievements in business and for his philanthropic work. In 2010 he was honored with the Silver Buffalo Award by the Boy Scouts of America, its highest award for adults, for his service to youth.

Investments

Cascade Investments LLC, a private investment and holding company, incorporated in United States, is controlled by Bill Gates, and is headquartered in the city of Kirkland, Washington.

bgC3, a new think-tank company founded by Bill Gates.

Corbis, a digital image licensing and rights services company.

TerraPower, a nuclear reactor design company.

Bibliography

Gates has authored two books:

''The Road Ahead'' (1995)

''Business @ the Speed of Thought'' (1999)

Filmography

Gates has appeared in at least one film: ''Waiting For Superman''

See also

List of billionaires (also see List of college dropout billionaires and List of wealthiest non-inflated historical figures)

Paul Allen – Microsoft's co-founder, friend, and fellow billionaire

Books

References

Further reading

"The Meaning of Bill Gates: As his reign at Microsoft comes to an end, so does the era he dominated", ''The Economist'', June 28, 2008.

External links

The Gates Notes ''official site''

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Profile at Microsoft

Profile at Forbes

How I Work: Bill Gates, ''Fortune'', March 30, 2006

Category:1955 births Category:American billionaires Category:American computer businesspeople Category:American chief executives Category:American computer programmers Category:American philanthropists Category:American technology writers Category:Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation people Category:Businesspeople in software Category:Harvard University people Category:Honorary Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire Category:Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Category:Microsoft employees Category:History of Microsoft Category:National Medal of Technology recipients Category:Living people Category:People from Seattle, Washington Category:People from King County, Washington Category:Windows people Category:Fellows of the British Computer Society Category:American people of Scottish descent

af:Bill Gates als:Bill Gates ang:Bill Gates ar:بيل غيتس ast:Bill Gates az:Bil Geyts bn:বিল গেটস zh-min-nan:Bill Gates map-bms:Bill Gates be:Біл Гейтс be-x-old:Біл Гэйтс bar:Bill Gates bs:Bill Gates br:Bill Gates bg:Бил Гейтс ca:Bill Gates cv:Билл Гейтс cs:Bill Gates cy:Bill Gates da:Bill Gates de:Bill Gates et:Bill Gates el:Μπιλ Γκέιτς es:Bill Gates eo:Bill Gates ext:Bill Gates eu:Bill Gates fa:بیل گیتس fo:Bill Gates fr:Bill Gates fy:Bill Gates ga:Bill Gates gd:Bill Gates gl:Bill Gates gu:બિલ ગેટ્સ hak:Bill Gates ko:빌 게이츠 hi:बिल गेट्स hr:Bill Gates io:Bill Gates ilo:Bill Gates id:Bill Gates ia:Bill Gates is:Bill Gates it:Bill Gates he:ביל גייטס jv:Bill Gates kn:ಬಿಲ್ ಗೇಟ್ಸ್ pam:Bill Gates ka:ბილ გეიტსი sw:Bill Gates ku:Bill Gates la:Gulielmus Gates lv:Bils Geitss lb:Bill Gates lt:Bill Gates lij:Bill Gates li:Bill Gates jbo:bil. geits hu:Bill Gates mk:Бил Гејтс ml:ബിൽ ഗേറ്റ്സ് mt:Bill Gates mr:बिल गेट्स arz:بيل جيتس ms:Bill Gates mn:Билл Гэйтс my:ဘီလ်ဂိတ် nl:Bill Gates new:बिल गेट्स ja:ビル・ゲイツ no:Bill Gates nn:Bill Gates oc:Bill Gates uz:Bill Gates km:ប៊ីល ហ្គេត nds:Bill Gates pl:Bill Gates pt:Bill Gates kaa:Bill Gates ro:Bill Gates qu:Bill Gates ru:Гейтс, Билл sa:बिल गेट्स sq:Bill Gates scn:Bill Gates simple:Bill Gates sk:Bill Gates sl:Bill Gates so:Bill Gates ckb:بیل گەیتس sr:Бил Гејтс sh:Bill Gates fi:Bill Gates sv:Bill Gates tl:Bill Gates ta:பில் கேட்ஸ் tt:Билл Гейтс te:బిల్ గేట్స్ th:บิล เกตส์ tr:Bill Gates uk:Білл Гейтс ur:بل گیٹس vec:Bill Gates vi:Bill Gates fiu-vro:Gatesi Bill war:Bill Gates yi:ביל גייטס yo:Bill Gates zh-yue:比爾蓋茨 bat-smg:Bils Geitsos zh:比尔·盖茨