William Henry "Bill" Gates III, (born October 28, 1955) At age 17, Gates formed a venture with Allen, called Traf-O-Data, to make traffic counters based on the Intel 8008 processor. Gates did not have a definite study plan while a student at Harvard
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. 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. The company moved from Albuquerque to its new home in Bellevue, Washington on January 1, 1979.
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. When subordinates appeared to be procrastinating, he was known to remark sarcastically, "I'll do it over the weekend." 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.
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
, June 2009.]]
Gates married Melinda French from
Dallas, Texas on January 1, 1994. They have three children: daughters Jennifer Katharine Gates (born 1996) and Phoebe Adele Gates (born 2002), and son Rory John Gates (born 1999).
The Gates' 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's 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 2nd wealthiest man behind Carlos Slim.
Philanthropy
,
Queen Rania of Jordan, Former British Prime Minister
Gordon Brown, President
Yar Adua of Nigeria and other participants in a 'Call to Action on the Millennium Development Goals' during the Annual Meeting 2008 of the
World Economic Forum in
Davos, Switzerland.]]
Gates began to realize the expectations others had of him when public opinion mounted 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 is set up to allow benefactors access to 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 have met with Rockefeller several times and have 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 has also received criticism because it invests the assets that it has not yet distributed with the exclusive goal of maximizing the return on investment. As a result, its investments include companies that have been criticized for 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 cancelled the review and stood by its policy of investing for maximum return, while using voting rights to influence company practices. Gates has made The Giving Pledge to donate over half of his wealth to charity.
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 , 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, WA.
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 Official Site of Bill Gates – The Gates Notes
Biography of Bill Gates at Microsoft.com
Forbes profile page on Bill Gates
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
How I Work: Bill Gates
TED Talks: Bill Gates trying to change the world now at TED in 2009
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Category:Time Persons of the Year
