William Henry Gates III is an American entrepreneur and public figure, philanthropist, one of the creators, and also the former largest shareholder of Microsoft.
Place of Birth, Education
He was born on October 28, 1955 in Seattle, Washington, the son of William Henry Gates II, who worked as a corporate attorney, and Mary Maxwell Gates, who served on the board of directors of First Interstate Bank, Pacific Northwest Bell, the national board of USWest, and the United Way.
Gates was first educated at a municipal elementary school, after which he moved to a private educational institution.
In 1973, he entered Harvard University at the Law School, but in 1975 he was expelled due to poor academic performance and frequent absences.
Career
Traf-O-Data
In 1970, Gates, along with classmates Paul Allen and Paul Gilbert, founded his first company, Traf-O-Data, which was engaged in the creation of software for traffic analysis and optimization. This development was Gates’ first successful project, which he sold to government agencies for 20 thousand dollars.
The very next year, Information Sciences approached Gates and Allen with a proposal to write a program to automate the preparation of payroll.
In 1972, Gates developed a software package to manage energy distribution and ensure safety at the Bonneville Dam. For this work, he received a fee of 30 thousand dollars.
At the end of 1973, his friend Allen got a job at the Boston branch of Honeywell. Gates began assisting him in creating software.
In 1974, MITS developed a new personal computer, the Altair 8800. Gates proposed a completely new programming language for him – BASIC, which eventually became popular all over the world.
Microsoft
In 1975, Gates, along with Paul Allen, founded Micro-Soft, which was later renamed Microsoft Corporation.
In 1981, Gates and Allen officially turned Microsoft into a corporation specializing in software development. In the same year, IBM released its first personal computer, which used the MS-DOS 1.0 operating system.
The computer’s software also includes Microsoft products, including the COBOL, BASIC, and Pascal programming languages.
In 1982, Gates convinced IBM management to license MS-DOS to other personal computer manufacturers, which played an important step in Microsoft’s development.
In 1983, Microsoft developed a computer mouse , the Mouse manipulator, which simplified the user’s interaction with the computer. In the same year, the corporation also presented a text editor for working with MS-DOS. Also in 1983, Microsoft introduced the Windows operating system for the first time.
In 1993, the number of registered Windows users worldwide reached 25 million.
In 1998, Microsoft was at the center of a high-profile antitrust investigation – the company was accused of unfair treatment of competitors and consumers. Gates was summoned for questioning, which lasted a total of 12 hours. Evidence was collected in the case, including emails that contained threats to competitors. As a result, the company was ordered to pay heavy fines, as well as change its approach to doing business.
On December 14, 2004, Gates became a member of the board of directors of Berkshire Hathaway. In addition, he was a member of the board of directors of the biotechnology company Icos.
On January 7, 2008, Gates announced his intention to leave the leadership position at Microsoft in July of the same year. He decided to focus his activities on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which he founded with his wife.
On June 27, Gates handed over the duties of CEO to Steve Ballmer, but remained chairman of the Microsoft Board of Directors and retained his status as the company’s largest shareholder.
Bill Gates Company Three
After that, he founded Bill Gates Company Three (bgC3). It is engaged in analytical research, the provision of technology services, as well as software and hardware development.
In February 2014, Gates left the post of chairman of the board of directors of Microsoft.
On December 2, 2015, Gates, together with Mark Zuckerberg, founded the Breakthrough Energy Coalition fund, which aims to attract private investment in the research and development of clean and alternative energy sources.
On March 14, 2020, Bill Gates announced that he was resigning from Microsoft’s board of directors, retaining only the role of advisor to the chairman of the board.
Marital Status
In 1994, Gates married Melinda French, who had worked for his company before marriage.
In 1996, the couple had a daughter, Jennifer, three years later, a son, Rory, and in 2002, their youngest daughter, Phoebe, was born.
After the wedding, Melinda quit her job and devoted herself entirely to her family.
On May 3, 2021, Melinda and Gates announced their decision to separate. The divorce was filed on August 2 of the same year.
