On December 28, 1955, William Henry Gates III, the official name of Bill Gates, was born in Seattle, Washington, on the west coast of the United States. Father William Henry Gates (William Henry Gates, Sr.) was a well-known local lawyer. His deceased mother Mary Maxwell Gates was a director of the University of Washington, a director of the banking system, and the United Way International), his maternal grandfather JW Maxwell (JW Maxwell) was former president of the National Bank. Bill grew up with his two sisters.
In 1973, Gates was admitted to Harvard University. Gates scored 1590 (out of 1600) on the SAT (American College Admission Test) standardized test. Although Gates has a good memory, he has a lot of "smelly problems": he often skips classes, doesn't like bathing, and only eats pizza and drinks soda when programming or playing cards. Gates became close friends with Steve Ballmer, who was in the same dormitory. While at Harvard, Gates developed a version of the BASIC programming language for the first microcomputer, MITS Altair.
On November 26, 1976, Gates and Allen registered the "Microsoft" (Microsoft) trademark. Allen was 23 years old and Gates was 21 years old. In January 1977, Gates dropped out of Harvard University and went to Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. There, he found a job writing programs for Roberts at a salary of $10 per hour. MITS is headquartered in Albuquerque, where Gates also locates Microsoft's headquarters. In 1977, when Gates' secretary entered the Microsoft office building, he often found Gates himself lying on the floor sleeping. He still likes to eat pizza at this time, and he often argues fiercely with his colleagues. Gates often said at the time: "This is the most stupid idea I have ever heard of."
On August 28, 1980, Gates signed a contract with IBM, agreeing to develop an operating system for IBM's PC. Then he bought an operating system called QDOS for $50,000, and after a little improvement, the product was renamed DOS, and then licensed to IBM for use. In 1982, during the first year of marketing, Gates licensed the MS-DOS operating system to 50 hardware manufacturers. On November 10, 1983, the Windows operating system debuted on stage. This product is an evolved version of the MS-DOS operating system and provides a graphical user interface.
On July 17, 1995, Gates topped the Forbes list of global billionaires with a personal wealth of US$12.9 billion. Gates was 39 years old. Microsoft's sales revenue for the year was 5.9 billion U.S. dollars and the number of employees was 17,801. On July 17, 2017, the "Forbes" latest wealth list was released. Bill Gates ranked first with a worth of US$90 billion. This is also the 18th time that Bill Gates has won the "Forbes" global rich list.
In 1999, Gates and his wife changed the name of the William H. Gates Foundation to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and stated that the purpose of the foundation is to reduce inequalities that exist around the world. On June 26, 2006, after receiving a donation of more than 30 billion U.S. dollars from his friend Buffett, the Bill Melinda-Gates Foundation doubled its funding size and became the world's largest charitable foundation.
On June 27, 2008, Bill Gates officially retired, but he still served as the chairman of Microsoft to guarantee the company's operations, and donated $58 billion in personal property to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He announced in his will Spend 98% of the "Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation" named after him and his wife founded by him. This money is used to research AIDS and malaria vaccines and provide assistance to poor countries in the world.