William Henry Gates III is an American business magnate, software developer, and philanthropist. He is best known as the co-founder of Microsoft Corporation. He stepped down as chairman of Microsoft in February 2014 and assumed a new post as technology adviser to support the newly appointed CEO Satya Nadella. In March 2020, Gates left his board positions at Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway to focus on his philanthropic endeavors. He has given sizable amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. As of November 2020, Gates had an estimated net worth of US$113. 7 billion, making him the third-wealthiest person in the world.
About Bill Gates in brief
William Henry Gates III is an American business magnate, software developer, and philanthropist. He is best known as the co-founder of Microsoft Corporation. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of chairman, chief executive officer, president and chief software architect. He stepped down as chairman of Microsoft in February 2014 and assumed a new post as technology adviser to support the newly appointed CEO Satya Nadella. In March 2020, Gates left his board positions at Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway to focus on his philanthropic endeavors including climate change, global health and development, and education. He has given sizable amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. As of November 2020, Gates had an estimated net worth of US$113. 7 billion, making him the third-wealthiest person in the world, behind Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. Gates was born in Seattle, Washington, on October 28, 1955. His father was a prominent lawyer, and his mother served on the board of directors for First Interstate BancSystem and the United Way of America. His maternal grandfather was J. W. Maxwell, a national bank president. Gates has an older sister Kristi and a younger sister Libby. He is the fourth of his name in his family but is known as William Gates III or ‘Trey’ because his father had the ‘II’ suffix. Gates is the son of William H. Gates Sr. and Mary Maxwell Gates.
His ancestry includes English, German, and IrishScots-Irish. When he was young, his family regularly attended a church of the Congregational Christian Churches, a Protestant Reformed denomination. He was small for his age and was bullied as a child. At 13, he enrolled in the private Lakeside prep school, where he wrote his first software program. In the eighth grade, the Mothers’ Club bought a Tele Model 33 ASR terminal and used proceeds from the sale to buy a General Electric computer for the block of time. Gates took an interest in the GE BASIC system and he was excused from math classes to pursue his interest in computers. He later became fascinated by the DEC PDP-10 systems including DEC P10 and PDP One-10 minicomputers. He became a software developer and wrote a program that allowed users to play games against the computer. In 1996, he created the first software for the Microsoft Windows operating system. In 1998, he co-founded Microsoft with childhood friend Paul Allen in Albuquerque, New Mexico; it went on to become the world’s largest personal computer software company. Gates led the company as chairman and CEO until stepping down as CEO in January 2000. He gradually transferred his duties to Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie. In 2009, Gates and Warren Buffett founded The Giving Pledge, whereby they and other billionaires pledge to give at least half of their wealth to philanthropy. In October 2017, he was surpassed by Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.
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