William Henry Gates III (born William Henry "Bill" Gates III) is an American entrepreneur and public figure, philanthropist, one of the founders (together with Paul Allen) and the former largest shareholder of Microsoft. He is also co-chairman of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, member of the Board of Directors of Berkshire Hathaway, CEO of Cascade investment.

Place of birth, education. Born in Seattle, Washington, the son of William Henry Gates II, a corporate lawyer, and Mary Maxwell Gates, member of the Board of Directors of First Interstate Bank, Pacific Northwest Bell and National Council of USWest, United Way.

Bill Gates attended a public elementary school and later at the private Lakeside School. In 1973, he entered Harvard University as a law student, but was expelled in 1975 for poor academic performance and absenteeism.

Career. In 1970, the first Traf-O-Data company was created, which employed Bill Gates and his classmates Paul Allen and Paul Gilbert. The company was developing a program to optimize traffic, it was the first successful program sold by Bill Gates to the government for $20 thousand dollars.

In 1971, Bill and Paul were asked by Information Sciences to write a payroll program.

In 1972, Gates wrote the Bonneville Dam's power distribution and safety package. Payment amounted to $30 thousand dollars.

In late 1973, Paul Allen, a friend of Bill's, got a job at the Boston branch of Honeywell, and Gates began helping him with programming.

In 1974, MITS created a new personal computer - the Altair 8800, and Bill offers a completely new programming language for this computer, which later conquered the whole world - BASIC. The trial run of the new language went well, and Gates gets a job in it.

In 1975, Gates and Allen founded Micro-Soft, later called Microsoft Corporation.

In 1979, IBM offers Bill to create an operating system for the world's first personal computer, but Gates refuses because he did not have the development necessary for such work. In the same year, he purchased an operating system called 86-DOS and invites Tim Patterson, its author, to work with him. After significant processing, bought for $50 thousand, the operating system became known as MS-DOS and was proposed by Gates for the IBM PC.

In September 1980, IBM approved the project and signed an extended contract with Bill Gates.

In 1981, Paul Allen and Bill Gates transform Microsoft into a computer software corporation. IBM in the same year releases the first personal computer with MS-DOS 1.0 - a sixteen-bit operating system. The software of this computer included Microsoft products - COBOL, BASIC, Pascal.

In 1982, Bill Gates persuaded IBM managers to expand MS-DOS by licensing the operating system to other PC manufacturers.

In 1983, Microsoft created a computer mouse - the Mouse manipulator, which makes it much easier to enter data into a PC equipped with a graphical interface. The corporation also introduces a new text editor specifically for MS-DOS. Also in 1983, Bill Gates' company introduces Windows.

In 1993, twenty-five million people in the world use Windows as registered users.

In 1998, Microsoft Corporation is accused of dishonest treatment of consumers and competitors. Bill Gates is called in for interrogation, which lasts a total of twelve hours. There was a lot of factual material against Gates, including threatening emails. As a result of the lawsuit, the corporation was required to pay significant fines, penalties, and also change its approach to business without fail.

On December 14, 2004, Bill Gates joined the board of Berkshire Hathaway, a conglomerate that includes Geico (car insurance), Benjamin Moore (paints) and Fruit of the Loom (textiles). Gates also sits on the board of Bothell's biotech company Icos.

On January 7, 2008, Bill Gates announced his intentions to step down as CEO of Microsoft in July 2008, switching his activities to managing the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a charitable foundation he and his wife created to support projects in the fields of health and education.

On June 27, 2008, Bill Gates transferred his powers to Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, but remained the head of the Board of Directors and the largest shareholder of Microsoft - 8.7%. Gates' departure did not actually affect the productivity of the corporation.

Bill Gates himself founded the Bill Gates Company Three ("bgC3"). Its activities are positioned as research, non-commercial, and according to regulatory documents, the company "bgC3" is engaged in work in the field of analytical research, the provision of technological services and the development of software and hardware.

In October 2013, according to Reuters, three major shareholders of Microsoft (with a share of about 5%) demanded the resignation of Bill Gates from the position of head of the corporation's board of directors. At that time, the share of Gates's shares was 4.5 percent. In February 2014, Gates stepped down as chairman of the board of directors.

On December 2, 2015, together with Zuckerberg, he founded the Breakthrough Energy Coalition fund, designed to attract private investment in the search and development of clean and alternative energy sources. Created the Mission Innovation initiative, which unites 20 countries, including the UK, USA, Brazil, India, China and others. The objective of the initiative is to double the level of public investment in the development of clean energy sources over the next five years from $10 billion to $20 billion dollars a year.

On March 14, 2024, Bill Gates announced that he was leaving the board of directors of Microsoft, leaving behind only the post of adviser to the chairman of the board.

Capital. In the period from 1996 to 2007, he was the richest person on the planet according to Forbes magazine. In March 2012, in Forbes magazine, Bill was ranked second with a fortune of $61 billion dollars. On May 17, 2013, according to the Bloomberg rating, he regained the title of the richest person on Earth. As of September 30, 2014, he became 21 times the richest earthling. The sum of the fortune was $$81 billion

In the list of Forbes billionaires in 2018, he was displaced to second place by Amazon owner Jeff Bezos. Bill Gates' capital amounted to $90 billion, while Bezos' assets were estimated at $112 billion. In April 2019, it became known that the fortune of Bill Gates exceeded $100 billion.

Regalia. On March 2, 2005, the British Foreign Office announced that Gates would be made a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire for his contributions to UK businesses and his efforts to alleviate world poverty.

At the end of 2005, Bill Gates and his wife Melinda Gates were named People of the Year by the American magazine Time.

Since June 7, 2007, Bill Gates has been considered a graduate of Harvard University. The decision to award Gates a diploma was made by the university administration.

In 2017, President François Hollande awarded Gates and his wife, Melinda, France's highest national honor, the Légion d'honneur for their philanthropy.

Books. In 1995, Bill Gates wrote the book "The Road to the Future" (eng. TheRoadAhead), which outlined his views on the direction in which society is moving in connection with the development of information technology. In 1996, when Microsoft refocused on the Internet, Gates made significant adjustments to the book.

In 1999, Bill Gates wrote Business @ theSpeedofThought, which shows how information technology can solve business problems in a whole new way.

Family. In 1994, Bill Gates married Melinda French, and two years later their daughter Jennifer appeared in their family. Three years later, the son of Rory was born, and in 2002, the daughter of Phoebe was born. Melinda worked for Gates long before she married him. After the wedding, she left the service and devoted herself to household chores.

October 27, 2024