Bill gates
Early Life
William Henry Gates III, known as Bill Gates, was born on October 28, 1955, in Seattle, Washington. He is the son of William H. Gates Sr., a prominent lawyer, and Mary Maxwell Gates, a schoolteacher, University of Washington regent, and chairwoman of United Way International. Gates has one older sister, Kristi (Kristianne), and a younger sister, Libby. He is of English, German, and Irish descent.
His parents had a law career in mind for him, but Gates was fascinated by computers from an early age. At 13, he enrolled at the Lakeside School, a private preparatory school. It was here that Gates had his first encounter with a computer – a Teletype Model 33 ASR terminal and a block of computer time donated by Mothers' Club at the school. He was immediately captivated and spent much of his free time working on the terminal.
Education
Gates graduated from Lakeside School in 1973. He scored 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT and enrolled at Harvard University in the autumn of 1973. He chose a pre-law major but took mathematics and graduate level computer science courses. While at Harvard, he met his future business partner, Steve Ballmer, who was an undergraduate at the school.
Gates did not have a definite study plan while a student at Harvard and spent a lot of time using the school's computers. He remained in contact with Paul Allen, joining him at Honeywell during the summer of 1974. The following year, he and Allen formed Micro-Soft, a blend of "microcomputer" and "software".
Microsoft
In 1975, Gates and Allen launched Microsoft, which became the world's largest PC software company. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of chairman, chief executive officer (CEO), president and chief software architect, while also being the largest individual shareholder until May 2014.
In the early years, Gates personally reviewed every line of code the company shipped, often rewriting parts of it as he saw fit. He aggressively broadened the company's range of products, and wherever Microsoft achieved a dominant position he vigorously defended it.
Personal Life
Gates married Melinda French on a golf course on the Hawaiian island of Lanai on January 1, 1994. They have three children: Jennifer Katharine (born 1996), Rory John (born 1999), and Phoebe Adele (born 2002). The family resides in an earth-sheltered mansion in the side of a hill overlooking Lake Washington in Medina, Washington.
Philanthropy
In 2000, Gates and his wife combined three family foundations to create the charitable Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 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.
Gates has credited his philanthropy in part to the example set by American industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. Gates and his wife invited Joan Salwen to Seattle to speak about what the family's philanthropy ideas looked like, and on December 9, 2010, Gates, investor Warren Buffett, and Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg signed a commitment they called the "Giving Pledge". The pledge is a commitment by all three to donate at least half of their wealth over time to charity.
Recognition
Gates has received numerous awards for his entrepreneurial and philanthropic work. Time magazine named Gates one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century. The magazine also named Gates and his wife Melinda, along with rock band U2's lead singer, Bono, as the 2005 Persons of the Year. 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.
