William "Bill" Henry Gates III

Net Worth: around of USD 40 billion(estimated)
(prior to 2007-2009 recession, USD 58+ billion)

Occupation: Chairman of Microsoft Corporation; Co-Chair of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Primary field of study: Undetermined (Harvard University, did not graduate)
Status: Married to Melinda Gates (1994-present)
Children: Jennifer Katharine(1996),
Rory John(1999), Phoebe Adele(2002)

William "Bill" Henry Gates III

Essential Information :
Bill Gates is an American business magnate, philantrophist, and the third richest person in the world as of 2008. He is also the founder of Microsoft Corporation and its current Chairman, as well as being the largest individual shareholder of the multi-billion dollar enterprise. He is also one of the best -known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution -- indeed, one could argue that he made it possible and practicable for the common household to own and use a personal computer.

Biography & Geek Symptoms:
..born October 28, 1955 in Seattle, Washington to a wealthy family
..father was a prominent lawyer
..mother served ont he board of directors for First Interstate BancSystem and the United Way
..early in life, his parents had a law career in mind for him
..while in 8th grade at Lakeside School, he took an interest in programming in BASIC, writing a player-vs-computer implementation of tic-tac-toe ..along with 3 friends, he was banned from using computers belonging to Computer Center Corporation (CCC) after it was discovered that they had exploited bugs in the operating system to obtain free computer time
..co-wrote a payroll program in COBOL for Information Sciences, Inc in exchange for computer time and royalties
..still in prep school, he was tasked to author the school's computer program to schedule students in classes; he modified the code so that he was placed in classes with mostly female students
..scored 1590 out of 1600 on his SATs

Milestones in Ingenuity :
..while still in prep school at age 17, Gates formed a venture with Paul Allen, called Traf-O-Data, to make traffic counters based on the Intel 8008 processor
..within 2 years of starting his college education in Harvard, he took a leave of absence and decided instead to start a computer software company, as this timing coincided with the product release of Intel's 8080 CPU (the first sub $200 computer chip that could run BASIC), and he predicted the onset of a computer revolution with a low-cost desktop model at the forefront
..3 decades after he left Harvard in 1975 to pursue his entrepreneurial vision based on a computer revolution, Microsoft, which he co-founded in 1975, has over US$63 billion in assets and over US$250 Billion in market capitalization
..Microsoft Corporation has business interests in software development, gaming consoles, cable television, and employs close to 100,000 people in over 100 countries worldwide

Quotes:
"If you show people the problems and you show people the solutions they will be moved to act."
"I wish I wasn't ... There's nothing good that comes out of that. You get more visibility as a result of it." -- on being the world's richest man, circa 2006

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