Biography | Bill Gates – Founder of Microsoft

Bill Gates was born October 28, 1955 in Seattle (USA), where his father was lawyer and his mother professor at the University of Washington. Still in Seattle, it was at the Lakeside private school that he discovered computers on one of these gigantic computers from the late 1960s, a PDP-10. At 13 years old. It is with his childhood friend Paul Allen that they program their first games and seek to optimize software.

In 1973, Gates entered Harvard University as a first year student. There he met Steve Ballmer, who would later become the future boss of Microsoft until 2014. Besides this decisive meeting and his aspirations for computer programming, his university studies went no further than this first year.

Still with his friend Paul Allen, Bill Gates set out to develop the very first computer language working with microcomputer general public Altair 8800. Called Altair BASIC, it was the first software from the company created for the occasion: Micro-Soft, later renamed Microsoft.

From Microsoft's beginnings to the departure of Bill Gates

It was especially at the beginning of the 80s that the two friends signed the beginnings of Microsoft's success and marked the real consumer revolution in micro-computing. The company has developed for IBM a operating system dedicated to personal computers (PC) : the famous MS-DOS. It was from this time that the sale of compatible PCs powered by MS-DOS, then the first versions of Windows exploded. Microsoft quickly became essential. Building on this success, Bill Gates is systematically on the podium of the richest personalities in the world according to the annual ranking of the Forbes magazine. In 1995, the billionaire also became the author of a successful book, with "The road to the future"He describes his vision of the future world, the explosion of technology and the importance of information.

It was from 2008 that Bill Gates gradually disengaged from Microsoft. Since then, he has devoted himself with his wife Melinda to the humanitarian foundation Bill and Melinda-Gates set up in 2000. Its objective is to provide the world population with the innovations necessary for improving health and acquiring knowledge. Bill Gates announced that he would bequeath 95% of his fortune to the fight against disease and illiteracy in the Third World. In 2010, he was even followed by several billionaires who also promised to donate at least 50% of their personal wealth.

Bill Gates the philanthropist

Since 2017, the foundation has funded studies on the progress made in the fight against malnutrition, infant mortality, or diseases such as HIV. In addition to the actions carried out by his foundation, Bill Gates has invested in many other philanthropic fields or turned towards innovation and health. In particular, he made significant donations in research for the Alzheimer's disease. This is also the case with the concept of smart cities (smartcity) for which he is participating in the development of Belmont, a prototype city of this type. It has also given hundreds of millions of dollars in support of education and in particular to help libraries make their transition. digital. It also funds medical research on vaccines and in particular the Covid-19, with the possibility of knowing which populations are vaccinated thanks to electronic patches. Its actions in this area have been the subject of major campaigns fake news. In addition, the philanthropist and his foundation are regularly the subject of polemics on the origin and the behavior of the recipients of his investments.