Bill Gates

Lakeside School bought computer time with money raised at a rummage sale, and the eighth grader who found the Teletype in 1968 wrote a tic-tac-toe program on it and then more or less stopped leaving the room. He and three friends worked out how to exploit the operating system at Computer Center Corporation for free time, got themselves banned for it, and were then hired to hunt bugs in exchange for access. At 17 he and Paul Allen built a traffic-counting machine around an Intel 8008 chip. He scored 1590 on the SAT and went to Harvard in the autumn of 1973 to take Math 55 and play a great deal of poker. He left in 1975 and never went back for the degree.

He and Allen read about the Altair 8800 in Popular Electronics, told the manufacturer they had a BASIC interpreter for it, and then wrote one. Microsoft was founded on that in 1975, in Albuquerque, because that is where the customer was. In February 1976 Gates published an open letter accusing hobbyists of stealing his software — the opening move in an argument about whether code is property that the industry is still having. In 1980 IBM came looking for an operating system. Microsoft bought one for 50,000 dollars, licensed it to IBM, and kept the right to sell it to everybody else, which is the single decision that made the company. He was a billionaire at 31 and ran Microsoft as chief executive for 25 years.

The Justice Department sued on May 18, 1998. Gates sat for a videotaped deposition that August in which he argued about what the word compete meant and could not recall a great deal, and the tape was played in open court to considerable effect. Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ruled the company an illegal monopoly on April 3, 2000 and ordered it split in two that June. An appeals court threw out the breakup on June 28, 2001, and the case settled that November. Microsoft stayed whole, Gates stopped being chief executive, and the second reputation began — the foundation, the sweaters, the annual reading lists. The first one is still sitting in the transcripts.

The philanthropy moved him from monopolist to statesman faster than anyone expected, and then a different objection arrived: that one man's money now sets the agenda for global health, and for a while set it for American schools, without anyone having voted on it. He and Melinda French Gates divorced in 2021, and she left the foundation in 2024. Reporting on his meetings with Jeffrey Epstein did damage he has acknowledged. On May 8, 2025, he said he would give away virtually all of his money — more than 200 billion dollars — and close the foundation permanently on December 31, 2045. He is 70, the money is still there, and none of this is settled.

Bill Gates's life against the full span of the corpus — the fading end marks a life still in progress.

• Altair BASIC invention
  The first product, promised to a customer before it existed 1975
• Microsoft company
  Founded with Paul Allen in Albuquerque, New Mexico 1975
• An Open Letter to Hobbyists article
  The argument that software is property, made at 20 1976
• MS-DOS invention
  Licensed to IBM while Microsoft kept the right to sell it to everyone else 1981
• Microsoft Windows invention
  The interface that carried the company into the next two decades 1985
• Gates Foundation company
  Set to spend more than 200 billion dollars and close on December 31, 2045 2000

• 1968 aged ~13 Writes his first program on a Teletype bought with rummage-sale money Tic-tac-toe, in the eighth grade at Lakeside School in Seattle.
• 1972 aged ~17 Builds Traf-O-Data with Paul Allen around an Intel 8008 He was 17. The machine counted cars.
• 1975 aged ~20 Leaves Harvard and founds Microsoft in Albuquerque
• February 3, 1976 aged 20 Publishes An Open Letter to Hobbyists He claimed more than 90 percent of Altair BASIC users had never paid for it.
• 1980 aged ~25 Licenses an operating system to IBM and keeps the rest of the market
• 1987 aged ~32 Becomes the world's youngest billionaire at 31
• January 1, 1994 aged 38 Marries Melinda French in Hawaii They divorced in 2021 and she left the foundation in 2024.
• April 3, 2000 aged 44 A federal judge rules Microsoft an illegal monopoly The breakup order was overturned on appeal on June 28, 2001.
• May 8, 2025 aged 69 Announces he will give away nearly all his wealth within 20 years The foundation is to close permanently on December 31, 2045.

• Warren Buffett b. 1930
  Value investor whose disciplined approach built one of the largest personal fortunes in American history. largest donor to his foundation
• Andrew Carnegie 1835–1919
  Steel magnate who built one of the largest steel empires in history and later became a major philanthropist. model for the giving
• John D. Rockefeller 1839–1937
  Established the Rockefeller Foundation and funded medical research, education, and public health initiatives. the antitrust precedent he was measured against
• Mark Zuckerberg b. 1984
  Co-founder of Facebook who built the world's largest social media platform and reshaped global communication. Giving Pledge signatory
• Jeff Bezos b. 1964
  Founder of Amazon who transformed e-commerce and cloud computing, becoming one of the wealthiest people in history. rival at the top of the wealth lists