BIOGRAPHY:

Bill Gates is a computer genius who was at the forefront of creating the world’s most popular Windows software from Microsoft. An entrepreneur whose name topped the list of the richest and most influential people on the planet for 20 years. A businessman who donates an impressive part of his fortune to charity.

Childhood and adolescence:

Bill Gates was born in Seattle (Washington, USA) in the family of corporate lawyer William Henry Gates II, as well as Mary Maxwell Gates, who held senior positions on the board of directors of several major American companies. Bill was the second child in the family, he has two sisters – the older Christy and the younger Libby. Judging by the names of his ancestors, the genius’s family includes representatives of several nationalities: Germans, Scots and English.

When the boy went to school, his parents enrolled him in the most privileged educational institution in Seattle – Lakeside. Already at an early age, Bill’s favorite subject was programming. As a teenager, the American wrote his first game in BASIC. Although these were only “Tic Tac Toe”, they became the starting point in his future successes in his professional biography. In high school, Bill met Paul Allen, who later became his main business partner, but at school the guys had more fun hacking computer programs, not thinking about the strategy for developing innovative ideas.

At the age of 15, together with a school friend, Bill wrote the first traffic control program and organized a company to distribute it, called Traf-O-Data. This project brought the authors $20 thousand. Such success made the programmers believe in their own abilities.

In 1971, Bill and Paul even worked for a professional company, Information Sciences. The guys wrote a program for maintaining payrolls, but did not have time to finish it, since the project was stopped. In addition, as schoolchildren, Gates and Allen worked for TRW, where they programmed part of the code for a project that employees of the Bonneville Power Administration planned to use.

In 1973, Bill Gates became a student at Harvard University. Of course, he was going to specialize in software, but the practical side of things attracted the young man much more than the theory of science, so the unmotivated student missed a lot of classes. After studying only 2 courses, the aspiring programmer was expelled from the university. The lack of higher education did not become an obstacle for the young man to achieve success.

Microsoft Company:

In early 1975, Paul Allen learned that Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems was releasing a new generation of computers, the Altair 8800. Bill Gates became bold and called Ed Roberts, who headed the organization. Soon after the interview at MITS, the bosom friends became partners of the company.

Initially, they planned the name “Allen and Gates,” but such names are not typical for the high-tech market. Then the guys looked at the name of the employing company, deciding on a specific phrase – Micro-Soft (Microprocessors and Software). Within a year, the hyphen disappeared from the brand name, and the Microsoft trademark was registered in November 1976.

MITS soon ceased to exist, but Microsoft was able to attract new customers. Apple Corporation, whose founder was Steve Jobs, and Commodore, as well as computer developer RadioShack, have become new partners of Microsoft.

Friends and business partners began to plan the development of an innovative structure for decades. Allen dealt with technical issues, and Gates focused on developing public relations, contracts and other business contacts. The result of Microsoft’s work was Microsoft Fortran, which appeared in 1977. This OS can easily be considered the first full-fledged competitor to the standard CP/M system for Intel-based computers.

In 1980, Microsoft achieved success by entering into a deal with the “shark” of the computer business – IBM Corporation. Gates and Allen offered a more attractive system for their new computer than Digital Research, with which IBM had previously collaborated. Not least important for achieving this goal was the friendly acquaintance of Gates’ mother with IBM executives John Opel and John Akers.

Soon, Bill and Paul’s company offered the computer market a new system, MS-DOS, which for a long time became the main OS for Intel-based personal computers. In 1985, Microsoft released Windows, which differed from all previous competitors in its graphic design. Thus, the Windows computer era began, although the breakthrough came only in 1993 after the appearance of the third version of this system – Windows 3.1.

In 1986, Microsoft Corporation entered the stock markets. The value of the shares grew rapidly, and within a few months Bill became a billionaire. Gradually, the company’s position strengthened. By 1988, Microsoft was already considered the largest computer software developer in the world. Another decade later, Gates became the richest man in the world.

His career as an entrepreneur at Microsoft ended in March 2020 when Gates announced that he was leaving the company’s board of directors. Today, the entrepreneur earns money as an adviser to the chairman of the board. The businessman chose charity as his main activity.

Career:

In 1989, the businessman founded the Corbis company. The main task of this structure was the licensing of photographs, videos and other multimedia material for the media. Gates’ idea was that in the future people would decorate their homes not with paintings, but with electronic reproductions of them.

Corbis owns the rights to reproduce images of works of art in museums around the world. The St. Petersburg Hermitage, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the London National Gallery constantly cooperate with the company of the American entrepreneur. Bill Gates personally acquired a collection of rare works by Leonardo da Vinci, which are now on display at the Seattle Art Museum.

In the fall of 2008, Gates registered a new company, bgC3 (Bill Gates Company Three). This acronym stands for Bill Gates’ Third Company. The main tasks of the organization are research and analytical.

Social activity:

The billionaire and his wife became the founders of the world’s largest charitable organization, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which provides assistance to all those in need, regardless of nationality. The purpose of this enterprise is to support and improve the healthcare system, as well as overcome hunger in poor countries.

The entrepreneur is passionate about the ideas of maintaining environmental safety on Earth. In collaboration with Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates created the Breakthrough Energy Coalition fund, whose work is to find and attract private investment in the production of clean energy sources. Bill Gates pays attention to investments in the latest developments, such as the construction of a “smart city”, the creation of alternative energy, which will affect the reduction of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The entrepreneur also sponsors the creation of safe batteries that can become an alternative to Mata lithium-ion batteries. A businessman supports a project to produce artificial meat.

In 2018, the philanthropist donated $460 million to combat the crisis in US education. He also became a participant in a program to combat Alzheimer’s disease.

The Internet public caught the businessman wanting to influence the world’s birth rate. Gates, speaking at the TED2010 conference, spoke about the need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from energy production to a minimum.

He considered one of the methods of achieving the goal to be the creation of more vaccines, which were used to reduce population growth. The entrepreneur argued this by saying that vaccination gives the poorest segments of the population the opportunity to plan the future of their children while reducing infant mortality. Gates’ statements on the RuNet were taken literally, and the billionaire was credited with a passion for eugenics.

Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, the name of Bill Gates has acquired new rumors. In the eyes of the public, he has already become the protagonist of a conspiracy theory. According to the majority of Internet users, under the pretext of vaccination, the billionaire’s foundation plans to carry out mass chipping. The businessman himself considers these rumors too stupid to try to refute them.

Now the main business of life for an entrepreneur has become activities related to ecology. Gates is interested in climate change. The businessman intends to invest up to $2 billion in the fight against global warming. One of his projects for 2021 is darkening the sun by spraying special aerosols into the Earth’s atmosphere. The philanthropist is also actively investing in the fight against coronavirus, allocating the necessary amounts for research.

With the start of the coronavirus vaccination program, a rumor began to spread on the Internet that Bill Gates and infectious disease specialist Anthony Fauci lost the trial to lawyer Robert Kennedy Jr. The case was allegedly heard in the US Supreme Court. The publication was later found to be fake.

Books:

Bill Gates has published two bestsellers. In these books, the entrepreneur decided to talk about the rules of life that helped him achieve success. In 1995, The Road Ahead was published, which was at one time on the bestseller list of the American newspaper The New York Times. In 1999, Gates published the book Business the Speed of Thought. The work has been translated into 25 languages. The author in his publications talks about ways to use computer technology to solve problems in business.

The history of the origins and development of the computer industry was captured in the film “Pirates of Silicon Valley,” released in 1999. The drama was about the confrontation between Microsoft and Apple. Spectators and critics noted the great similarity between the leading actors and their characters. The image of Bill Gates in the frame was recreated by Anthony Michael Hall, Paul Allen was presented by Josh Hopkins.

In 2021, Gates released another literary work dedicated to the “green theme” – How to Avoid a Climate Disaster. In his book, which he presented on his personal website, the entrepreneur proposed increasing investments in nuclear energy and the production of electric vehicles. The publication debuted at the top of The New York Times non-fiction bestseller list.

Personal life:

The Microsoft creator lives in the “house of the future,” so called because of the advanced electronics that control the property. The mansion is located on the shores of Lake Washington and occupies 12 thousand square meters. m. This is a residential complex consisting of three pavilions connected to each other.

The co-founder of Microsoft Corporation is called one of the smartest people on the planet, as he is among the people with the highest level of intelligence. 160 – Bill Gates’ IQ level. A businessman reads up to fifty books a year. Gates, whose height reaches 177 cm, practices trampolining. One of the most exciting intellectual games is the game of bridge.

Marriage to Melinda:

The entrepreneur’s personal life for many years was connected with one woman. In 1987, at a work meeting in New York, Bill Gates met Microsoft employee Melinda French. They got married on January 1, 1994. After 2 years, the couple had a daughter, Jennifer Katharine, and later two more children – son Rory John and daughter Phoebe Adele. For the amount of money that Bill and his wife spent annually on charity, Time magazine named them people of the year in 2005. Their family photo was featured on the cover of the publication, which often publishes interviews and articles about the business and charity of the computer genius.

In the spring of 2021, Bill and Melinda Gates announced their separation. The reason for the divorce was given by the couple as the fact that they no longer saw prospects for the development of their relationship as a couple. At the same time, the businessman and his ex-wife retained common projects and remained friends.

According to Forbes magazine, in 2016, Bill Gates’s fortune reached $90 billion. At that time, he was considered the richest person in the world. A year later, he lost the championship to Jeff Bezos, founder of the Internet company Amazon.com. Just for fun, observers calculated the computer genius’s earnings per hour – in 2018 it turned out to be $450 thousand. In 2021, the amount in the entrepreneur’s personal account reached $130.4 billion.

After the divorce:

In 2023, rumors arose about the personal life of a divorced man. According to an insider, Gates began a relationship with Paula Heard back in 2022. This woman is the widow of Oracle CEO Mark Hurd. So, someone close to the billionaire told the press that Bill’s relatives allegedly know about their affair.

Journalists found that the Microsoft founder met Heard while her husband was still alive, in 2015. And in 2023, they came to Australia together, where one of the Grand Slam tournaments was held – the Australian Open.

Bill Gates now:

In an effort to improve the environmental situation in the world, Bill could not refuse a private jet. According to Gates, multi-billion dollar investments give him the right to use comfortable transport. Some experts in the field of ecology still called such statements by the philanthropist hypocritical.

Bill still advocated for a better life for people on earth. In this regard, in an interview with the BBC in 2023, he spoke about Elon Musk’s desire to go to Mars. He considered that this was too expensive a project and that the money would be better invested in more useful initiatives.

Bibliography:

1995 – “Road to the Future”
1999 – “Business at the speed of thought”

Interesting Facts:

As a child, the future genius rocked in his crib himself, and his favorite toy was a rocking horse.
The computer game “Spend Bill Gates’ Money” was named after the entrepreneur.
In his youth, the entrepreneur was given the nickname Con – “cramming, nerd.” Later, it turned out to be impossible to create a folder with a similar name in Windows. It was reserved for a system device.
The businessman is distinguished by his unpretentiousness in everyday life. In 2019, paparazzi captured the billionaire in line at a diner.