1955-
Chairman of Microsoft Corporation

Microsoft.

Critics' grievances notwithstanding, William Henry "Bill" Gates III has compiled an impressive resume. Born in 1955, Gates and his two sisters grew up in Seattle, the children of William Henry Gates II, an attorney, and Mary Gates, a schoolteacher, regent of the University of Washington, and chairwoman of United Way International. Gates began programming computers at the age of thirteen. In 1973 he entered Harvard University, where he developed the programming language BASIC (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) for the first microcomputer, the MITS Altair. In 1975, during his junior year, Gates left Harvard and moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to head a company that he called "Micro-soft." In 1978 the company, now spelled minus the hyphen, relocated to Seattle, Washington. As of 1999 the Microsoft Corporation, with a market value of $546 billion, was the wealthiest company and tenth largest economic entity in the world...