BILL GATES

William Henry "Bill" Gates III was born on October 28, 1955. He is an American business magnate, philanthropist, investor, computer programmer, and inventor. In 1975, Bill Gates and Paul Allen co-founded Microsoft, which became the world's largest PC software company. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions as the chairman, CEO and chief software architect, and was the largest individual shareholder until May 2014. Bill Gates has authored and co-authored several books.

In the beginning of 1987, Gates was included in the Forbes list of the world's wealthiest people and was the wealthiest overall from 1995 to 2014 and this exclude a few years after the financial crisis of 2007 to 2008. Between 2009 and 2014, his wealth doubled from US$40 billion to over US$82 billion. Between 2013 and 2014, his wealth was increased by US$15 billion. Bill Gates is currently the richest man in the world.

Bill Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. Gates has been criticized for his business tactics, that had been considered anti-competitive, an opinion which has in some cases been upheld by numerous court rulings. Later in his career Gates pursued a number of philanthropic endeavours, donating large amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, established in 2000.