Bill Gates

American computer scientist and businessman

• Born: October 28, 1955
• Place of Birth: Seattle, Washington

Gates cofounded Microsoft Corporation, the world’s largest software company. He served as Microsoft’s chair, CEO, and chief software architect. He also co-established one of the largest charitable organizations in the world.

Early Life

Born in Seattle, Washington, Bill Gates was the second of three children and only son of Bill Gates Sr., an attorney, and Mary Gates, a University of Washington regent. As a baby, Gates often rocked himself, a trait for which he became well known as an adult. Intellectually curious from a young age, Trey, as his family called him, reportedly read the lion’s share of his family’s encyclopedia at age seven or eight.

Gates preferred skiing and activities with the Boy Scouts over team sports, and he was extremely competitive during family card games. Small in stature and socially awkward as a child, he was frequently teased by his classmates, which prompted him to assume the role of class clown. His parents sent him to a psychologist when he was in the sixth grade because of his stubborn, rebellious nature.

In the seventh grade, Gates transferred to Lakeside School, an elite private institution. It was at Lakeside that he first used a computer, which was actually a teletype machine connected by telephone to a mainframe computer in a local office of General Electric. He spent endless hours in the computer room, writing his first software program, a game of tic-tac-toe, at age thirteen. He formed a close friendship with Paul Allen, a like-minded student two years his senior. Gates, Allen, and several others formed the Lakeside Programmers, a club that earned money by writing payroll and traffic data programs. Gates surprised some classmates by landing the lead role in a school play.

Gates entered Harvard University in 1973 as a prelaw major, but he remained focused on computers. He frequently skipped his classes and studied at the last minute for exams. On the social side, he became friends with fellow student Steve Ballmer and often participated in all-night poker games.

Life’s Work

The turning point in Gates’s life occurred when he was in his second year at Harvard. While Allen was visiting him on campus, Allen discovered a magazine article featuring the first microcomputer, the Altair 8800, which was manufactured by Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS). However, the computer lacked software. Sensing a groundbreaking opportunity, Gates and Allen informed MITS that they had software for the computer, even though that was not yet the case. For approximately five weeks during the winter of 1975, the pair worked around the clock to adapt a program from Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code (BASIC). After Allen successfully demonstrated the program at MITS’s New Mexico headquarters, the company agreed to distribute it with the Altair 8800 pursuant to a royalties agreement. It was under these circumstances that Gates and Allen established their business, Micro-Soft, later known as Microsoft Corporation.

While Allen temporarily went to work for MITS, Gates took a leave of absence from Harvard, briefly returned, and then permanently dropped out and moved to New Mexico, where Micro-Soft was based. Known to work sixteen-hour days, Gates raced his car around the nearby desert to relieve stress. In 1979, Gates relocated the business to Bellevue, Washington, a Seattle suburb. Through the promise of stock options, he persuaded Ballmer to join the company in a top position.

In 1980, International Business Machines (IBM) asked Microsoft to write a program for its new personal computer (PC). At the time, it was commonly believed that software played a subservient role to hardware. However, Gates had a contrary opinion. He purchased an existing operating system for $75,000 and adapted it for IBM’s PC. Called the Microsoft Disk Operating System, or MS-DOS, it was sold with every IBM PC. Pursuant to the licensing agreement, Microsoft was also entitled to sell its software to other companies. The operating system quickly became the computer industry standard. By the end of 1982, Microsoft sold approximately $32 million worth of software.

Gates was left in charge of Microsoft when Allen left the company in 1983 because of health concerns. Early on, Gates had often been underestimated because of his youthful, unkempt appearance. As Microsoft grew and Gates matured, he acquired a reputation as a savvy businessman and a ruthless competitor, the latter of which resulted in numerous enemies. Known for recruiting the brightest college graduates, Gates often sat in on interviews. His employees dressed casually and had flexible hours, but the work environment was intense and competitive. Gates himself continued to work long hours and had little time for vacations. He was often rude and arrogant, and he did not easily tolerate those whose technological knowledge failed to match his. However, he preferred sweaters to suits and only agreed to a reserved parking spot so he could leave on time for the airport.

Under Gates’s leadership, Microsoft continued to expand its product offerings, with sales topping $140 million in 1985. In 1986, Microsoft’s shares were traded on the stock exchange, and Gates soon became the world's youngest billionaire. By 1987, Microsoft became the planet’s largest software company. It was a point of pride that Gates had never borrowed money from his family to finance his business.

Gates’s immense wealth did not slow him down. In 1990, he launched the operating system Windows 3.0, which was a huge success because it allowed several different applications to run at the same time and was more user-friendly with its point-and-click mouse. Gates continued to release new versions of Windows, with each version an improvement over the last. Although he initially failed to recognize the importance of the internet, Gates subsequently released Internet Explorer (IE), Microsoft’s web browser, with the operating system Windows 95. IE would become the dominant web browser for a time.

Although Gates devoted long hours to Microsoft, he still found time to have several girlfriends, most notably businesswoman Ann Winblad, with whom he maintained a friendship with. In 1987, Microsoft hired a manager, Melinda French, who attracted his attention. They were married in Hawaii on January 1, 1994, and soon had three children. The family later lived in a forty-five-room house on Lake Washington in Medina that cost more than $50 million to build.

On May 18, 1998, the US Department of Justice and twenty states commenced an antitrust suit against Microsoft, alleging, among other things, that Microsoft bullied other companies into using Microsoft’s web browser over that of competitors. Gates did not personally testify at the trial. Instead, attorneys played his taped deposition, during which he denied knowledge of important company matters. His reputation suffered somewhat because many did not believe that he had been unaware of Microsoft’s business dealings. Although the trial judge ordered Microsoft to be split into two companies, the order never took effect because of a reversal on appeal and a settlement by the parties.

Gates was Microsoft’s chair and chief executive officer (CEO) until 2000. At that time, Ballmer became CEO while Gates remained chair and assumed the title of chief software architect. On June 15, 2006, Microsoft announced that, effective July 2008, Gates would no longer be involved in the company’s daily operations. However, he would retain the role of chair as well as advise the company on certain projects under development. In 2014, he stepped down as chairman, becoming a technology advisor and supporting the transition of Satya Nadella to CEO.

After reducing his role at Microsoft, Gates devoted extensive time to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a philanthropic organization he formed with Melinda French Gates in 2000. The foundation is dedicated to improving health and education and reducing poverty, among other goals. It supports work throughout the United States and in more than one hundred countries. By 2014, the foundation had an endowment of more than $40 billion. In addition to his work with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Gates, along with more than one hundred of the world's wealthiest individuals, has taken the Giving Pledge, a pledge to donate at least half of his wealth to charitable causes during his lifetime or after his death.

A particular focus of Gates's advocacy in the 2010s has been climate change and alternative energy. In 2015 Gates pledged $2 million for clean energy research and development and called for governments and private investors alike to put more money into the issue, arguing that speeding the pace of clean energy research is the only way of preventing disastrous climate change. In a later interview he specifically suggested that the US government increase its energy research budget from $6 billion over five years to $12 billion a year.

Gates has also invested in research on infectious diseases and the treatment thereof, and in 2017 he made his first investment in noncommunicable disease research, contributing $100 million to organizations researching dementia and Alzheimer's disease. In February 2020, the Gates foundation announced a $100 million donation, in addition to its previous pledge of $10 million, to help create a vaccine for coronavirus and help fight the COVID-19 pandemic. In December, the foundation announced an additional commitment of $250 million.

In March 2020, Gates announced that he would be leaving his position on the board of Microsoft to focus on his philanthropic endeavors, including climate change, global health, and education. In December 2020, he called for the government to create institutes for clean energy research. The same month, he became the biggest private farmland owner in the United States. As part of his efforts toward cleaner energy initiatives, in 2024 the company he had founded in 2008 and for which he served as chair, TerraPower, broke ground for a new nuclear power plant aiming to use an advanced nuclear reactor.

In August 2021, Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates finalized their divorce after previously announcing their intention to separate in May of that year. While they both continued in their roles at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for a time, Melinda French Gates's departure in the summer of 2024 meant that Gates became the sole chair.

Significance

While the industry was still in its infancy, Gates envisioned widespread use of computers and recognized the critical importance of software. His products made it easier for the average person to use a computer and for businesses to communicate with each other. These factors, in turn, made it easier to access information on a previously unimaginable scale.

Coupling astute business sense with superior technological knowledge, Gates embodies the traits that are necessary to survive and thrive in the modern global economy. Dedicated to philanthropic work, he has challenged others to donate a larger percentage of their fortune to charitable causes. Notwithstanding one’s opinion of Gates as a person, his influence on the world cannot be denied.

In late 2016, Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates were awarded Presidential Medals of Freedom for their work through the Gates Foundation. In 2017, Gates had topped Forbes magazine's annual billionaires list, which ranks the world's billionaires by their net worth, for eighteen of the past twenty-three years, including that year's list, which recorded his net worth as $86 billion. He ranked second in 2019, behind Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, with a net worth of $95.6 billion. By the early 2020s he had dropped further but remained within the top ten.

Bibliography

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Gates, Bill, and Melinda Gates. "Our 2019 Annual Letter." GatesNotes, 12 Feb. 2019, www.gatesnotes.com/2019-Annual-Letter. Accessed 4 June 2019.

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McDermott, Jennifer. "In Wyoming, Bill Gates Moves ahead with Nuclear Project Aimed at Revolutionizing Power Generation." AP, 10 June 2024, apnews.com/article/bill-gates-nuclear-terrapower-wyoming-climate-change-electricity-23176f33200b22b9ede7f4ccf4f2ec3b. Accessed 3 July 2024.

Wakabayashi, Daisuke, and Steve Lohr. "Bill Gates Stepping Down From Microsoft’s Board." The New York Times, 15 Mar. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/technology/bill-gates-microsoft-board.html. Accessed 6 Apr. 2020.

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