Bill Gates is the founder of the world’s largest software business, Microsoft, and thanks to this he is now one of the richest men in the world.
Gates was born in 1955 in Seattle and grew up in an upper-middle-class-family. As a child, he devoured books and was particularly good at maths and science. He enrolled at Harvard University to study law, but he left university before completing his degree.
In 1975 Gates founded Microsoft with Paul Allen, whom he met in high school. They showed the same enthusiasm for computers.
The name “Microsoft” is a blend of “micro-computer” and “software”. Microsoft developed “Windows”, a system which used a mouse to drive a graphic interface, displaying text and images on the screen.
This was very different from the text-and-keyboard driven MS-DOS system.
In 1994 Bill and his wife established a Foundation dedicated to supporting education, health and investment in low-income communities around the world. Gates is investing a lot of money in the Dementia’s and Alzheimer’s research. This is a personal matter for him, because he has seen the devastating effects of these diseases on his own family members.
Gates has received many awards for philanthropic work: for example, Time magazine named Gates one of the most influential people of the 20th century. He has three children and he is merried since 1994.
