Bill Gate - History & Biography

Bill Gates 

William Henry Gates III, known in the world as Bill Gates, is a computer scientist, philanthropist and American businessman, known for being the creator of Microsoft with Paul Allen. He was born on October 28, 1955, in Seattle, Washington, and is the son of William Henry Gates II and Mary Gates. He studied at the private Lakeside elite school in Seattle, where he began to show interest in computer science.

On April 4, 1975, while being a student at Harvard University, he founded the Microsoft Software Company along with his friend Paul Allen. A year later, he retired from the University to move to Albuquerque, New Mexico, headquarters of ITS (Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems), to agree with that company the session of 50% of the language for Basic computers.

In 1979, Microsoft began to grow, and Bill Gates decided to move his company to Seattle. Around 1980, he met with the representatives of IBM, where he managed to sell them the MS-DOS operating system; as he still did not have it he bought it from a young programmer, IBM needed that operating system to be able to compete with Apple.

After a while, Microsoft bought the copyright of QDOS from Tim Paterson, who worked for Seattle Computer Products. Aware of the importance of the graphics environment that Apple had shown, Bill Gates, visited them to offer his help to improve their spreadsheets and other programs, obtaining an Apple-Microsoft alliance.

Under the management of Bill Gates, Microsoft legally got the technology of the graphic and mouse environment, brought to the market for Microsoft Windows, as a direct competitor of the Macintosh.

In 1992, President Bush recognized the importance of the work of Bill Gates by awarding him the National Medal of Technology.

Around 1983, Bill Gates revolutionized personal computing again with the introduction of the “mouse” and a new graphical interface called to replace DOS (Windows). That same year, his friend Paul Allen left Microsoft, due to health problems. During this time, the company focused on the promotion of multimedia supports, especially in the educational field. 

Gates’ talent had been revealed in multiple computer programs, whose use was spread throughout the world as basic languages ​​of personal computers; but also in the success of a flexible and competitive company, managed with heterodox criteria.

The constant innovations of Bill Gates began to contribute to the rapid diffusion of the use of personal computing, producing a transcendental technical evolution in the ways of producing, transmitting and consuming information.

In 1994, he acquired a manuscript of Leonardo Da Vinci for twenty-five million dollars and married Melinda French.

On June 16, 2006, Bill Gates made public his intention to abandon his daily duties at the head of Microsoft to dedicate himself completely to the foundation; and on June 27, 2008, he retired from his work in front of Microsoft, transferring control of the company to Steve Ballmer. Bill Gates devotes 70% of his time to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the other 30% to the company.

 

BILL AND MELINDA GATES FOUNDATION

Besides being a computer expert, Bill Gates  and his wife created the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, located in the city of Seattle, which was created in January 2000 when the Gates Foundation for Learning and the William Foundation joined H. Gates. The foundation is directed by Bill Gates’ father, William H. Gates and Patty Stonesifer.

In May 2006, the Bill Gates Foundation was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for International Cooperation. For the year 2004, the foundation developed a $ 200 million campaign to promote AIDS prevention in India; the largest grant program in a single country. The effort had promotional help from Hollywood stars. Microsoft, a company led by Bill Gates, employs many Indian engineers in the United States and has 1,000 employees in India.

Bill Gates is “Vegan” since 2008, the year he stopped directing Microsoft, he has participated in some projects to spread this lifestyle. In this sense, together with Peter Thiel (co-founder of the Paypal company), he has supported the creation of artificial eggs made from easy to grow plants.

SOME AWARDS AND RECOGNITIONS

Indira Gandhi a la Paz Award received on July 25, 2009, in recognition of its contribution to the fight against AIDS granted to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Lasker Award, on September 9, 2013, in Washington, United States, Bill Gates and his wife Melinda Gates were honored with one of the prestigious Lasker Awards, known as the Nobel Prizes of the United States, which annually reward advances in medicine.

Bill Gates and his wife Melinda were awarded the Public Service Award for having initiated a “historical transformation in the way of perceiving the most worrisome health problems in the world and for having improved the lives of millions of people who are among the most vulnerable” This award was given to others in a ceremony on September 20 of the same year in New York, which was endowed with two hundred and fifty dollars.

Medal of Freedom, on November 22, 2016, President Barack Obama, acknowledgment to Bill and Melinda Gates who with their foundations and initiatives have donated to charity to improve the quality of life and the future of the people.