98 Facts About Bill Gates

William Henry Gates III was born on October 28,1955 and is an American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist.

Bill Gates is best known for co-founding software giant Microsoft, along with his late childhood friend Paul Allen.

Bill Gates was a major entrepreneur of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s.

Bill Gates led the company as chairman and CEO until stepping down as CEO in January 2000, succeeded by Steve Ballmer, but he remained chairman of the board of directors and became chief software architect.

Bill Gates stepped down as chairman of the board of Microsoft in February 2014 and assumed a new post as technology adviser to support the newly appointed CEO Satya Nadella.

In March 2020, Bill Gates left his board positions at Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway to focus on his philanthropic efforts on climate change, global health and development, and education.

Since 1987, Bill Gates has been included in the Forbes list of the world's wealthiest people.

Later in his career and since leaving day-to-day operations at Microsoft in 2008, Bill Gates has pursued many business and philanthropic endeavors.

Bill Gates is the founder and chairman of several companies, including BEN, Cascade Investment, TerraPower, bgC3, and Breakthrough Energy.

Bill Gates was born in Seattle, Washington on October 28,1955.

Bill Gates's father was a prominent lawyer, and his mother served on the board of directors for First Interstate BancSystem and the United Way of America.

Bill Gates has an older sister Kristi and a younger sister Libby.

The family lived in the Sand Point area of Seattle in a home that was damaged by a rare tornado when Bill Gates was seven years old.

Early in his life, Bill Gates observed that his parents wanted him to pursue a law career.

Bill Gates was small for his age and was bullied as a child.

Bill Gates took an interest in programming the GE system in BASIC, and he was excused from math classes to pursue his interest.

Bill Gates wrote his first computer program on this machine, an implementation of tic-tac-toe that allowed users to play games against the computer.

Bill Gates was fascinated by the machine and how it would always execute software code perfectly.

Towards the end of their junior year, Evans was killed in a mountain climbing accident, which Bill Gates has described as one of the saddest days of his life.

Bill Gates then turned to Allen who helped him finish the system for Lakeside.

At 17, Bill Gates formed a venture with Allen called Traf-O-Data to make traffic counters based on the Intel 8008 processor.

Bill Gates was a National Merit Scholar when he graduated from Lakeside School in 1973.

Bill Gates scored 1590 out of 1600 on the Scholastic Aptitude Tests and enrolled at Harvard College in the autumn of 1973.

Bill Gates chose a pre-law major but took mathematics and graduate level computer science courses.

Bill Gates devised an algorithm for pancake sorting as a solution to one of a series of unsolved problems presented in a combinatorics class by professor Harry Lewis.

Bill Gates's solution was formalized and published in collaboration with Harvard computer scientist Christos Papadimitriou.

Bill Gates remained in contact with Paul Allen and joined him at Honeywell during the summer of 1974.

Bill Gates's parents were supportive of him after seeing how much he wanted to start his own company.

Bill Gates read the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics which demonstrated the Altair 8800, and he contacted Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems to inform them that he and others were working on a BASIC interpreter for the platform.

MITS hired Allen, and Bill Gates took a leave of absence from Harvard to work with him at MITS in November 1975.

Microsoft's Altair BASIC was popular with computer hobbyists, but Bill Gates discovered that a pre-market copy had leaked out and was being widely copied and distributed.

Bill Gates moved from Albuquerque to Bellevue, Washington on January 1,1979.

Bill Gates said he personally reviewed and often rewrote every line of code that the company produced in its first five years.

IBM representative Jack Sams mentioned the licensing difficulties during a subsequent meeting with Bill Gates and asked if Microsoft could provide an operating system.

Bill Gates had not offered to transfer the copyright on the operating system to IBM because he believed that other personal computer makers would clone IBM's PC hardware.

Bill Gates oversaw Microsoft's company restructuring on June 25,1981, which re-incorporated the company in Washington state and made Bill Gates the president and chairman of the board, with Paul Allen as vice president and vice chairman.

Later in the decade, Bill Gates repaired his relationship with Allen and together the two donated millions to their childhood school Lakeside.

Microsoft and Bill Gates launched their first retail version of Microsoft Windows on November 20,1985, in an attempt to fend off competition from Apple's Macintosh GUI, which had captivated consumers with its simplicity and ease of use.

Windows XP, released one year after Bill Gates stepped down as Microsoft CEO, was the first to not be based on DOS.

Windows 8.1 was the last version of the OS released before Gates left the chair of the firm to John W Thompson on February 5,2014.

Bill Gates has not officially been on a development team since working on the TRS-80 Model 100, but he wrote code that shipped with the company's products as late as 1989.

On June 15,2006, Bill Gates announced that he would transition out of his role at Microsoft to dedicate more time to philanthropy.

Bill Gates gradually divided his responsibilities between two successors when he placed Ray Ozzie in charge of management and Craig Mundie in charge of long-term product strategy.

Since leaving day-to-day operations at Microsoft, Bill Gates has continued his philanthropy and works on projects.

On February 4,2014, Bill Gates stepped down as chairman of Microsoft to become "technology advisor" at the firm, alongside CEO Satya Nadella.

Bill Gates provided his perspective on a range of issues in a substantial interview that was published in the March 27,2014, issue of Rolling Stone magazine.

Bill Gates has expressed concern about the potential harms of superintelligence; in a Reddit "ask me anything", he stated that:.

In March 2018, Bill Gates met at his home in Seattle with Mohammed bin Salman, the reformist crown prince and de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia to discuss investment opportunities for Saudi Vision 2030.

In June 2019, Bill Gates admitted that losing the mobile operating system race to Android was his biggest mistake.

Bill Gates stated that it was within their skill set of being the dominant player, but partially blames the antitrust litigation during the time.

That same year, Bill Gates became an advisory board member of the Bloomberg New Economy Forum.

On March 13,2020, Microsoft announced Bill Gates would be leaving his board positions at Berkshire Hathaway and Microsoft to dedicate his efforts in philanthropic endeavors such as climate change, global health and development, and education.

Bill Gates considers climate change and global access to energy to be critical, interrelated issues.

Bill Gates has urged governments and the private sector to invest in research and development to make clean, reliable energy cheaper.

Bill Gates envisions that a breakthrough innovation in sustainable energy technology could drive down both greenhouse gas emissions and poverty, and bring economic benefits by stabilizing energy prices.

Bill Gates spearheaded two initiatives that he announced at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris.

Bill Gates has been criticised for holding a large stake in Signature Aviation, a company that services emissions-intensive private jets.

Bill Gates spent many efforts to make pass the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 because of his importance to climate.

Bill Gates tried to convince Joe Manchin to support a climate bill from the year 2019 and especially in the months before the adoption of the bill.

Bill Gates thanked both Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer for their efforts in a guest essay in The New York Times, where he said "Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 may be the single most important piece of climate legislation in American history" given its potential to spur development of new technologies.

Bill Gates gave further insights on climate change in his commencement address at Northern Arizona University on May 6,2023 where he was bestowed an honorary doctorate.

In 1998, Bill Gates rejected the need for regulation of the software industry in testimony before the United States Senate.

On February 18,2021, after Facebook and Twitter had banned Donald Trump from their platforms as a result of the 2020 United States presidential election which led to the January 6 United States Capitol attack, Bill Gates said a permanent ban of Trump "would be a shame" and would be an "extreme measure".

Bill Gates has credited the generosity and extensive philanthropy of David Rockefeller as a major influence.

Bill Gates delivered his thoughts in a fireside chat moderated by journalist and news anchor Shereen Bhan virtually at the Singapore FinTech Festival on December 8,2020, on the topic, "Building Infrastructure for Resilience: What the COVID-19 Response Can Teach Us About How to Scale Financial Inclusion".

Melinda Bill Gates suggested that people should emulate the philanthropic efforts of the Salwen family, who sold their home and gave away half of its value, as detailed in their book, The Power of Half.

Gates and his wife invited Joan Salwen to Seattle to speak about what the family had done, and on December 9,2010, Bill and Melinda Gates and investor Warren Buffett each signed a commitment they called the "Giving Pledge", which is a commitment by all three to donate at least half of their wealth, over the course of time, to charity.

In June 2018, Bill Gates offered free ebooks, to all new graduates of US colleges and universities, and in 2021, offered free ebooks, to all college and university students around the world.

Federer and Bill Gates played against John Isner, the top-ranked American player for much of this decade, and Mike McCready, the lead guitarist for Pearl Jam.

Bill Gates is an avid reader, and the ceiling of his large home library is engraved with a quotation from The Great Gatsby.

Bill Gates's days are planned for him on a minute-by-minute basis, similarly to the US president's schedule.

On May 10,2022, Bill Gates said that he tested positive for COVID-19 and was experiencing mild symptoms.

Bill Gates married Melinda French on the Hawaiian Island of Lanai on January 1,1994.

At the time of their marriage, Bill Gates was given permission by Melinda to spend limited time with his ex-girlfriend, businesswoman Ann Winblad.

Bill Gates's image morphed from "tyrannical technocrat to saintly savior" to a "huggable billionaire techno-philanthropist", celebrated on magazine covers and sought after for his opinions on major issues like global health and climate change.

Investigative journalist Tim Schwab has accused Bill Gates of using his contributions to the media to shape their coverage of him in order to protect his public image.

Bill Gates has been implausibly accused of attempting to depopulate the world, distributing harmful or unethical vaccines, and implanting people with privacy-violating microchips.

In May 2006, Bill Gates remarked that he wished that he were not the richest man in the world because he disliked the attention that it brought.

In March 2010, Gates was the second wealthiest person after Carlos Slim, but regained the top position in 2013, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires List.

In October 2017, Bill Gates was surpassed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as the richest person in the world.

Bill Gates has several investments outside Microsoft, which in 2006 paid him a salary of US$616,667 and US$350,000 bonus totalling US$966,667.

Since 1987, Gates has been included in the Forbes The World's Billionaires list and was the wealthiest person from 1995 to 1996,1998 to 2007,2009, and held the spot until 2018 before being overtaken by Jeff Bezos.

Bill Gates was number one on the Forbes 400 list from 1993 through to 2007,2009, and 2014 through 2017.

Bill Gates approved of many decisions that led to antitrust litigation over Microsoft's business practices.

Worse, many of the technology chief's denials and pleas of ignorance were directly refuted by prosecutors with snippets of e-mail that Bill Gates both sent and received.

Bill Gates later said that he had simply resisted attempts by Boies to mischaracterize his words and actions.

Bill Gates had primary responsibility for Microsoft's product strategy from the company's founding from 1975 until 2006.

Bill Gates had studied the game until he solved it.

Allen would recall that Bill Gates was prone to shouting episodes.

Bill Gates met regularly with Microsoft's senior managers and program managers, and the managers described him as being verbally combative.

Bill Gates berated them for perceived holes in their business strategies or proposals that placed the company's long-term interests at risk.

Bill Gates said in 2011 about Epstein: "His lifestyle is very different and kind of intriguing although it would not work for me".

However, in an interview in 2019 Bill Gates completely denied any connection between Epstein and the Bill Gates Foundation or his philanthropy generally.

Also in attendance were representatives of the International Peace Institute which has received millions in grants from the Bill Gates Foundation, including a $2.5 million "community engagement" grant in October 2013.

Bill Gates was the guest on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs on January 31,2016, in which he talked about his relationships with his father and Steve Jobs, meeting Melinda Ann French, the start of Microsoft and some of his habits.

Bill Gates made a guest appearance as himself on the TV show The Big Bang Theory.

Bill Gates appeared in a cameo role in 2019 on the series finale of Silicon Valley.

In 2023, Gates was the interviewee in an episode of the Amol Rajan Interviews series on BBC Two, and was the subject of an episode of the The Billionaires Who Made Our World UK Channel 4 series.