Born in Seattle, Washington, on October 28, 1955, William Henry Gates III, founder of the Microsoft computer empire, is, in the year 2003, the world's wealthiest person, as well as the founder of the world's largest philanthropic foundation. Superlatives and paradoxes stick to Gates. Having scored a perfect 800 on the math portion of the Standard Aptitude Test (SAT), he later dropped out of college. Praising technology for "enhancing our leisure time" (Gates 1996, p. 284), his idea of a slow week (after marrying Melinda French in 1994) was to cut his workday to twelve hours a day during the week and eight hours a day on weekends.

Bill Gates, b. 1955. The co-founder and chief executive officer of Microsoft became the wealthiest man in America and one of the most influential personalities on the ever-evolving information superhighway and computer industry. (© Jim Lake/Corbis.)

Paradoxes also demarcate his ethical stances, both in business and...