Misplaced Pages

Latest revision as of 23:06, 6 January 2025

Bill Gates
Gates in 2024
Born	William Henry Gates III (1955-10-28) October 28, 1955 (age 69) Seattle, Washington, U.S.
Education	Harvard University (dropped out)
Occupations	Businessman philanthropist computer programmer writer
Years active	1972–present
Known for	Pioneer of the personal computer revolution with Paul Allen Co-founding of Microsoft and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Title	See list Chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Chairman and founder of Cascade Investment Chairman and founder of Branded Entertainment Network Chairman and co-founder of TerraPower Founder of Breakthrough Energy Founder of Gates Ventures Technology advisor of Microsoft
Spouse	Melinda French ​ ​(m. 1994; div. 2021)​
Children	3
Parents	Bill Gates Sr. Mary Maxwell
Awards	Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (2005) Padma Bhushan (2015) Presidential Medal of Freedom (2016) Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun (2020) Hilal-e-Pakistan (2022)
Website	gatesnotes.com
Signature

This article is part of a series about Bill Gates
Awards and honors Philanthropy Political positions Public image Residence Companies Traf-O-Data Microsoft (criticism) BENlabs Cascade Investment TerraPower Gates Ventures Charitable organizations Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Match for Africa The Giving Pledge OER Project Breakthrough Energy Mission Innovation Writings "An Open Letter to Hobbyists" The Road Ahead Business @ the Speed of Thought How to Avoid a Climate Disaster How to Prevent the Next Pandemic Related Bill Gates' flower fly Codex Leicester Lost on the Grand Banks History of Microsoft Timeline of Microsoft Paul Allen
v t e

William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American businessman and philanthropist best known for co-founding the software company Microsoft with his childhood friend Paul Allen. He later held the positions of chairman, chief executive officer (CEO), president, and chief software architect of the company. Gates was also its largest individual shareholder until May 2014. He was a pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s.

In June 2008, Gates transitioned into a part-time role at Microsoft and full-time work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the private charitable foundation he and his then-wife Melinda had established in 2000. He stepped down as chairman of the Microsoft board in February 2014 and assumed the role of technology adviser to support newly appointed CEO Satya Nadella. In March 2020, Gates left his board positions at Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway to focus on his philanthropic efforts on climate change, global health and development, and education.

Gates was born and raised in Seattle, Washington. In 1975, he and Allen founded Microsoft in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Gates led the company as its chairman and chief executive officer until stepping down as CEO in January 2000, succeeded by Steve Ballmer, but he remained chairman of the board of directors and became chief software architect. During the late 1990s, he was criticized for his business tactics, which were considered anti-competitive.

Since 1987, Gates has been included in the Forbes list of the world's top billionaires. From 1995 to 2017, he held the title of the wealthiest person in the world every year except in 2008 and from 2010 to 2013. In 1999, he became the first ever centibillionaire when his net worth briefly surpassed US$100 billion. Since leaving day-to-day operations at Microsoft in 2008, Gates has pursued other business and philanthropic endeavors.

He is the founder and chairman of several companies, including BEN, Cascade Investment, TerraPower, Gates Ventures, and Breakthrough Energy. He has donated to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, reported to be the world's largest private charity. Through the foundation, he led an early 21st century vaccination campaign that significantly contributed to the eradication of the wild poliovirus in Africa. In 2010, Gates and Warren Buffett founded the Giving Pledge, whereby they and other billionaires pledge to give at least half of their wealth towards philanthropy.

Early life and education

William Henry Gates III was born on October 28, 1955, in Seattle, Washington, as the only son of William H. Gates Sr. (1925–2020) and his first wife, Mary Maxwell Gates (1929–1994). His ancestry includes English, German, and Irish/Scots-Irish. His father was a prominent lawyer, and his mother served on the board of directors of First Interstate BancSystem and United Way of America. Gates's maternal grandfather J. W. Maxwell was a national bank president. Gates also has an older sister Kristi (Kristianne) and a younger sister Libby. He is the fourth of his name in his family but is known as William Gates III or "Trey" (i.e., three) because his father had the "II" suffix. The family lived in the Sand Point area of Seattle in a home that was damaged by a rare tornado when Gates was 7.

When Gates was young his parents wanted him to pursue a career in law. During his childhood, his family regularly attended a church of the Congregational Christian Churches, a Protestant Reformed denomination. Gates was small for his age and was bullied as a child. The family encouraged competition; one visitor reported that "it didn't matter whether it was hearts or pickleball or swimming to the dock; there was always a reward for winning and there was always a penalty for losing".

At age 13, he enrolled in the private Lakeside prep school. When he was in eighth grade, the Mothers' Club at the school used proceeds from Lakeside School's rummage sale to buy a Teletype Model 33 ASR terminal and a block of computer time on a General Electric (GE) computer for the students. Gates took an interest in programming the GE system in BASIC, and he was excused from math classes to pursue his interest. He wrote his first computer program on this machine, an implementation of tic-tac-toe that allowed users to play games against the computer. Gates was fascinated by the machine and how it would always execute software code perfectly. After the Mothers Club donation was exhausted, Gates and other students sought time on systems including DEC PDP minicomputers. One of these systems was a PDP-10 belonging to Computer Center Corporation (CCC) which banned Gates, Paul Allen, Ric Weiland, and Gates's best friend and first business partner Kent Evans for the summer after it caught them exploiting bugs in the operating system to obtain free computer time.

The four students formed the Lakeside Programmers Club to make money. At the end of the ban, they offered to find bugs in CCC's software in exchange for extra computer time. Rather than using the system remotely via Teletype, Gates went to CCC's offices and studied source code for various programs that ran on the system, including Fortran, Lisp, and machine language. The arrangement with CCC continued until 1970 when the company went out of business. The following year, a Lakeside teacher enlisted Gates and Evans to automate the school's class-scheduling system, providing them computer time and royalties in return. The duo worked diligently in order to have the program ready for their senior year. Towards the end of their junior year, Evans was killed in a mountain climbing accident, which Gates described as one of the saddest days of his life. He then turned to Allen who helped him finish the system for Lakeside.

At 17, Gates formed a venture with Allen called Traf-O-Data to make traffic counters based on the Intel 8008 processor. In 1972, he served as a congressional page in the House of Representatives. He was a national merit scholar when he graduated from Lakeside School in 1973. He scored 1590 out of 1600 on the Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SAT) and enrolled at Harvard College in the autumn of 1973. He did not stay at Harvard long enough to choose a concentration, but took mathematics (including Math 55) and graduate level computer science courses. While at Harvard, he met fellow student and future Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Gates left Harvard after two years while Ballmer stayed and graduated magna cum laude. Years later, Ballmer succeeded Gates as Microsoft's CEO and maintained that position from 2000 until his resignation in 2014.

Gates devised an algorithm for pancake sorting as a solution to one of a series of unsolved problems presented in a combinatorics class by professor Harry Lewis. His solution held the record as the fastest version for over 30 years, and its successor is faster by only 2%. His solution was formalized and published in collaboration with Harvard computer scientist Christos Papadimitriou.

Gates remained in contact with Paul Allen and joined him at Honeywell during the summer of 1974. In 1975, the MITS Altair 8800 was released based on the Intel 8080 CPU, and Gates and Allen saw the opportunity to start their own computer software company. Gates dropped out of Harvard that same year. His parents were supportive of him after seeing how much he wanted to start his own company. He explained his decision to leave Harvard: "if things hadn't worked out, I could always go back to school. I was officially on leave."

Microsoft

BASIC

Gates read the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics which demonstrated the Altair 8800, and contacted Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) to inform them that he and others were working on a BASIC interpreter for the platform. In reality, Gates and Allen did not have an Altair and had not written code for it; they merely wanted to gauge MITS's interest. MITS president Ed Roberts agreed to meet them for a demonstration, and over the course of a few weeks they developed an Altair emulator that ran on a minicomputer, and then the BASIC interpreter. The demonstration was held at MITS's offices in Albuquerque, New Mexico; it was a success and resulted in a deal with MITS to distribute the interpreter as Altair BASIC. MITS hired Allen, and Gates took a leave of absence from Harvard to work with him at MITS in November 1975. Allen named their partnership "Micro-Soft", a combination of "microcomputer" and "software", and their first office was in Albuquerque. The first employee Gates and Allen hired was their high school collaborator Ric Weiland. They dropped the hyphen within a year and officially registered the trade name "Microsoft" with the Secretary of the State of New Mexico on November 26, 1976. Gates never returned to Harvard to complete his studies.

Microsoft's Altair BASIC was popular with computer hobbyists, but Gates discovered that a pre-market copy had leaked out and was being widely copied and distributed. In February 1976, he wrote An Open Letter to Hobbyists in the MITS newsletter in which he asserted that more than 90% of the users of Microsoft Altair BASIC had not paid Microsoft for it and the Altair "hobby market" was in danger of eliminating the incentive for any professional developers to produce, distribute, and maintain high-quality software. This letter was unpopular with many computer hobbyists, but Gates persisted in his belief that software developers should be able to demand payment. Microsoft became independent of MITS in late 1976, and it continued to develop programming language software for various systems. The company moved from Albuquerque to Bellevue, Washington on January 1, 1979.

Gates said he personally reviewed and often rewrote every line of code that the company produced in its first five years. As the company grew, he transitioned into a manager role, then an executive. DONKEY.BAS, is a computer game written in 1981 and included with early versions of the PC DOS operating system distributed with the original IBM PC. It is a driving game in which the player must avoid hitting donkeys. The game was written by Gates and Neil Konzen.

IBM partnership

IBM, the leading supplier of computer equipment to commercial enterprises at the time, approached Microsoft in July 1980 concerning software for its upcoming personal computer, the IBM PC, after Gates's mother mentioned Microsoft to John Opel, IBM's then CEO. IBM first proposed that Microsoft write the BASIC interpreter. IBM's representatives also mentioned that they needed an operating system, and Gates referred them to Digital Research (DRI), makers of the widely used CP/M operating system. IBM's discussions with Digital Research went poorly and they did not reach a licensing agreement. IBM representative Jack Sams mentioned the licensing difficulties during a subsequent meeting with Gates and asked if Microsoft could provide an operating system. A few weeks later, Gates and Allen proposed using 86-DOS, an operating system similar to CP/M, that Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products (SCP) had made for hardware similar to the PC. Microsoft made a deal with SCP to be the exclusive licensing agent of 86-DOS, and later the full owner. Microsoft employed Paterson to adapt the operating system for the PC and delivered it to IBM as PC DOS for a one-time fee of $50,000.

The contract itself only earned Microsoft a relatively small fee. It was the prestige brought to Microsoft by IBM's adoption of their operating system that would be the origin of Microsoft's transformation from a small business to the leading software company in the world. Gates had not offered to transfer the copyright on the operating system to IBM because he believed that other personal computer makers would clone IBM's PC hardware. They did, making the IBM-compatible PC, running DOS, a de facto standard. The sales of MS-DOS (the version of DOS sold to customers other than IBM) made Microsoft a major player in the industry. The press quickly identified Microsoft as being very influential on the IBM PC. PC Magazine asked if Gates was "the man behind the machine?".

Gates oversaw Microsoft's company restructuring on June 25, 1981, which re-incorporated the company in Washington state and made Gates the president and chairman of the board, with Paul Allen as vice president and vice chairman. In early 1983, Allen left the company after receiving a Hodgkin lymphoma diagnosis, effectively ending the formal business partnership between Gates and Allen, which had been strained months prior due to a contentious dispute over Microsoft equity. Later in the decade, Gates repaired his relationship with Allen and together the two donated millions to their childhood school Lakeside. They remained friends until Allen's death in October 2018.

Windows

Microsoft and Gates launched their first retail version of Microsoft Windows on November 20, 1985, in an attempt to fend off competition from Apple's Macintosh GUI, which had captivated consumers with its simplicity and ease of use. In August 1986, the company struck a deal with IBM to develop a separate operating system called OS/2. Although the two companies successfully developed the first version of the new system, the partnership deteriorated due to mounting creative differences. The operating system grew out of DOS in an organic fashion over a decade until Windows 95, which hid the DOS prompt by default. Windows XP was released one year after Gates stepped down as Microsoft CEO. Windows 8.1 was the last version of the OS released before Gates left the chair of the firm to John W. Thompson on February 5, 2014.

Management style

During Microsoft's early years, Gates was an active software developer, particularly in the company's programming language products, but his primary role in most of the company's history was as a manager and executive. He has not officially been on a development team since working on the TRS-80 Model 100, but he wrote code that shipped with the company's products as late as 1989. Jerry Pournelle wrote in 1985 when Gates announced Microsoft Excel: "Bill Gates likes the program, not because it's going to make him a lot of money (although I'm sure it will do that), but because it's a neat hack." During the late 1990s, he was criticized for his business tactics, which were considered anti-competitive. This opinion has been upheld by numerous court rulings.

In June 2006, Gates announced that he would transition out of his role at Microsoft to dedicate more time to philanthropy. He gradually divided his responsibilities between two successors when he placed Ray Ozzie in charge of management and Craig Mundie in charge of long-term product strategy. The process took two years to fully transfer his duties to Ozzie and Mundie, and was completed on June 27, 2008.

Post-Microsoft

Since leaving day-to-day operations at Microsoft, Gates has continued his philanthropy and works on other projects. He stepped down as chairman of Microsoft in February 2014 to become technology advisor at the firm to support newly appointed CEO Satya Nadella.

Gates provided his perspective on a range of issues in an interview that was published in the March 2014 issue of Rolling Stone magazine. In the interview, he provided his perspective on climate change, his charitable activities, various tech companies and people involved in them, and the state of America. In response to a question about his greatest fear when he looks 50 years into the future, Gates stated: "there'll be some really bad things that'll happen in the next 50 or 100 years, but hopefully none of them on the scale of, say, a million people that you didn't expect to die from a pandemic, or nuclear or bioterrorism." Gates also identified innovation as the "real driver of progress" and pronounced that "America's way better today than it's ever been." Gates has often expressed concern about the potential harms of superintelligence; in a Reddit "ask me anything", he stated that:

First the machines will do a lot of jobs for us and not be super intelligent. That should be positive if we manage it well. A few decades after that though the intelligence is strong enough to be a concern. I agree with Elon Musk and some others on this and don't understand why some people are not concerned.

In an interview that was held at the TED conference in March 2015, with Baidu co-founder and CEO, Robin Li, Gates said he would "highly recommend" Nick Bostrom's recent work, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. During the conference, Gates warned that the world was not prepared for the next pandemic, a situation that would come to pass in late 2019 when the COVID-19 pandemic began. In March 2018, Gates met at his home in Seattle with Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince and de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia to discuss investment opportunities for Saudi Vision 2030. In June 2019, Gates admitted that losing the mobile operating system race to Android was his biggest mistake. He stated that it was within their skill set of being the dominant player, but partially blames the antitrust litigation during the time. That same year, Gates became an advisory board member of the Bloomberg New Economy Forum.

In March 2020, Microsoft announced Gates would be leaving his board positions at Berkshire Hathaway and Microsoft to dedicate himself to philanthropic endeavors such as climate change, global health and development, and education. The Wall Street Journal reported in May 2021 that Gates stepped down before Microsoft's board finished its investigation into Gates's alleged inappropriate sexual relationship with a Microsoft employee, which an external law firm had begun probing in late 2019.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Gates has widely been looked at by media outlets as an expert on the issue, despite him not being a public official or having any prior medical training. His foundation did, however, establish the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator in 2020 to hasten the development and evaluation of new and repurposed drugs and biologics to treat patients for COVID-19, and, as of February 2021, Gates expressed that he and Anthony Fauci frequently talk and collaborate on matters including vaccines and other medical innovations to fight the pandemic.

Business ventures and investments

Gates has a multi-billion dollar investment portfolio with stakes in companies in multiple sectors and has participated in several entrepreneurial ventures beyond Microsoft, including:

• AutoNation, an automotive retailer which trades on the NYSE and in which Gates has a 16% stake.
• bgC3 LLC, a think-tank and research company founded by Gates.
• Canadian National Railway (CN), a Canadian Class I freight railway. As of 2019, Gates is the single largest shareholder of the company.
• Cascade Investment LLC, a private investment and holding company incorporated in the United States, founded and controlled by Gates and headquartered in Kirkland, Washington.
  • Gates is the largest private owner of farmland in the United States with his landholdings owned through Cascade Investment totalling 242,000 acres across 19 states. He is the 49th largest private owner of land in the US.
• Carbon Engineering, a for-profit venture founded by David Keith, which Gates helped fund. It is also supported by Chevron Corporation and Occidental Petroleum.
  • SCoPEx, Keith's academic venture in "sun-dimming" geoengineering, which Gates provided most of the $12 million for.
• Corbis (originally named Interactive Home Systems and now known as Branded Entertainment Network), a digital image licensing and rights services company founded and chaired by Gates.
• EarthNow, a Seattle-based startup company aiming to blanket the Earth with live satellite video coverage. Gates is a large financial backer.
• Eclipse Aviation, a defunct manufacturer of very light jets. Gates was a major stake-holder early on in the project.
• Impossible Foods, a company that develops plant-based substitutes for meat products. Some of the $396 million Patrick O. Brown collected for his business came from Gates around 2014 to 2017.
• Ecolab, a global provider of water, hygiene and energy technologies and services to the food, energy, healthcare, industrial and hospitality markets. Combined with the shares owned by the Foundation, Gates owns 11.6% of the company. A shareholder agreement in 2012 allowed him to own up to 25% of the company, but this agreement was removed.
• ResearchGate, a social networking site for scientists. Gates participated in a $35 million round of financing along with other investors.
• TerraPower, a nuclear reactor design company co-founded and chaired by Gates, which is developing next generation traveling-wave reactor nuclear power plants in an effort to tackle climate change.
• Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a closed fund for wealthy individuals who seek ROI on a 20-year horizon (see next section), which "is funding green start-ups and a host of other low-carbon entrepreneurial projects, including everything from advanced nuclear technology to synthetic breast milk." It was founded by Gates in 2015.
• Ginkgo Bioworks, a biotech startup that received $350 million in venture funding in 2019, in part from Gates's investment firm Cascade Investment.
• Luminous Computing, a company that develops neuromorphic photonic integrated circuits for AI acceleration.
• Mologic, a British diagnostic technology company that Gates purchased, along with the Soros Economic Development Fund, "which has developed 10-minute Covid lateral flow tests that it aims to make for as little as $1."

Climate change and energy

Gates considers climate change and global access to energy to be critical, interrelated issues. He has urged governments and the private sector to invest in research and development to make clean, reliable energy cheaper. Gates envisions that a breakthrough innovation in sustainable energy technology could drive down both greenhouse gas emissions and poverty, and bring economic benefits by stabilizing energy prices. In 2011, he said: "If you gave me the choice between picking the next 10 presidents or ensuring that energy is environmentally friendly and a quarter as costly, I'd pick the energy thing."

In 2015, he wrote about the challenge of transitioning the world's energy system from one based primarily on fossil fuels to one based on sustainable energy sources. Global energy transitions have historically taken decades. He wrote, "I believe we can make this transition faster, both because the pace of innovation is accelerating, and because we have never had such an urgent reason to move from one source of energy to another." This rapid transition, according to Gates, would depend on increased government funding for basic research and financially risky private-sector investment, to enable innovation in diverse areas such as nuclear energy, grid energy storage to facilitate greater use of solar and wind energy, and solar fuels.

Gates spearheaded two initiatives that he announced at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris. One was Mission Innovation, in which 20 national governments pledged to double their spending on research and development for carbon-free energy in over five years' time. Another initiative was Breakthrough Energy, a group of investors who agreed to fund high-risk startups in clean energy technologies. Gates, who had already invested $1 billion of his own money in innovative energy startups, committed a further $1 billion to Breakthrough Energy. In December 2020, he called for the U.S. federal government to create institutes for clean energy research, analogous to the National Institutes of Health. Gates has also urged rich nations to shift to 100% synthetic beef industries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from food production.

Gates has been criticized for holding a large stake in Signature Aviation, a company that services emissions-intensive private jets. In 2019, he began to divest from fossil fuels. He does not expect divestment itself to have much practical impact, but says that if his efforts to provide alternatives were to fail, he would not want to personally benefit from an increase in fossil fuel stock prices. After he published his book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, parts of the climate activist community criticized Gates's approach as technological solutionism. In 2022, educational streamer Wondrium produced the series "Solving for Zero: The Search for Climate Innovation" inspired by the book.

In June 2021, Gates's company TerraPower and Warren Buffett's PacifiCorp announced the first sodium nuclear reactor in Wyoming. Wyoming Governor Mike Gordon hailed the project as a step toward carbon-negative nuclear power. Wyoming Senator John Barrasso also said that it could boost the state's once-active uranium mining industry.

Gates spent many efforts to make pass the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 because of his importance to climate. He tried to convince Joe Manchin to support a climate bill from the year 2019 and especially in the months before the adoption of the bill. The bill should cut the global greenhouse gas emissions in a level similar to "eliminating the annual planet-warming pollution of France and Germany combined" and may help to limit the warming of the planet to 1.5 degrees – the target of the Paris Agreement. He thanked both Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer for their efforts in a guest essay in The New York Times, where he said "Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 may be the single most important piece of climate legislation in American history" given its potential to spur development of new technologies. Gates gave further insights on climate change in his commencement address at Northern Arizona University on May 6, 2023, where he was bestowed an honorary doctorate.

Political positions

In October 2024, The New York Times reported Gates had recently donated $50 million to Future Forward USA Action, a 501(c)(4) organization supporting Kamala Harris's 2024 presidential campaign. In response to the report, he did not explicitly address the donation or endorse Harris, but said "this election is different."

Regulation of the software industry

In 1998, Gates rejected the need for regulation of the software industry in testimony before the United States Senate. During the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) investigation of Microsoft in the 1990s, Gates was reportedly upset at then Commissioner Dennis Yao for "float a line of hypothetical questions suggesting possible curbs on Microsoft's growing monopoly power". According to one source:

Gates was vexed. "He started by calling Yao's ideas socialistic," recalls a source familiar with the July 15 meeting, "and as he got angrier and angrier and louder and louder, he got into calling them Communistic."

Donald Trump Facebook ban

After Facebook and Twitter had banned Donald Trump from their platforms on February 18, 2021, as a result of the 2020 United States presidential election which led to the January 6 United States Capitol attack, Gates said a permanent ban of Trump "would be a shame" and would be an "extreme measure". He warned that it would cause "polarization" if users with different political views divide up among various social networks, and said: "I don't think banning somebody who actually did get a fair number of votes (in the presidential election) – well less than a majority – but I don't think having him off forever would be that good."

Patents for COVID-19 vaccines

In April 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Gates was criticized for suggesting that pharmaceutical companies should hold onto patents for COVID-19 vaccines. The criticism came due to the possibility of this preventing poorer nations from obtaining adequate vaccines. Tara Van Ho of the University of Essex stated, "Gates speaks as if all the lives being lost in India are inevitable but eventually the West will help when in reality the US & UK are holding their feet on the neck of developing states by refusing to break protections. It's disgusting."

Gates is opposed to the TRIPS waiver. Bloomberg News reported him as saying he argued that Oxford University should not give away the rights to its COVID-19 information, as it had announced, but instead sell it to a single industry partner, as it did. His views on the value of legal monopolies in medicine have been linked to his views on legal monopolies in software.

Cryptocurrencies

Gates has been critical of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. According to him, cryptocurrencies provide no "valuable output", contribute nothing to society, and pose a danger especially for smaller investors who could not survive the potentially high losses. Gates also does not own any cryptocurrencies himself.

Philanthropy

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Gates studied the work of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, and donated some of his Microsoft stock in 1994 to create the "William H. Gates Foundation". In 2000, Gates and his wife combined three family foundations and donated stock valued at $5 billion to create the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which was identified by the Funds for NGOs company in 2013, as the world's largest charitable foundation, with assets reportedly valued at more than $34.6 billion. The foundation allows benefactors to access information that shows how its money is being spent, unlike other major charitable organizations such as the Wellcome Trust. Gates, through his foundation, also donated $20 million to the Carnegie Mellon University for a new building to be named Gates Center for Computer Science which opened in 2009.

Gates has credited the generosity and extensive philanthropy of David Rockefeller as a major influence. He and his father met with Rockefeller several times, and their charity work is partly modeled on the Rockefeller family's philanthropic focus, whereby they are interested in tackling the global problems that are ignored by governments and other organizations.

The foundation is organized into five program areas: Global Development Division, Global Health Division, United States Division, and Global Policy & Advocacy Division. Among others, it supports a wide range of public health projects, granting aid to fight transmissible diseases such AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, as well as widespread vaccine programs to eradicate polio. It grants funds to learning institutes and libraries and supports scholarships at universities. The foundation established a water, sanitation and hygiene program to provide sustainable sanitation services in poor countries. Its agriculture division supports the International Rice Research Institute in developing Golden Rice, a genetically modified rice variant used to combat vitamin A deficiency. The foundation aims to provide women and girls in the developing world with information and support regarding contraception and, ultimately, universal access to consensual family planning. In 2007, the Los Angeles Times criticized the foundation for investing its assets in companies that have been accused of worsening poverty, pollution and pharmaceutical firms that do not sell to developing countries. Although the foundation announced a review of its investments to assess social responsibility, it was subsequently canceled and upheld its policy of investing for maximum return, while using voting rights to influence company practices.

Gates delivered his thoughts in a fireside chat moderated by journalist and news anchor Shereen Bhan virtually at the Singapore FinTech Festival on December 8, 2020, on the topic, "Building Infrastructure for Resilience: What the COVID-19 Response Can Teach Us About How to Scale Financial Inclusion".

Governments are there to think ahead to bad things that might happen. In the case of (the COVID-19) pandemic, not enough was done. We can't forget that another pandemic will come and we'll need to invest in being ready in that, ... while not forgetting that we were not prepared and we're going to have to invest – just like having a fire department – some money in an intelligent way and actually simulate what might happen and make sure that we're ready for it.

Gates favors the normalization of COVID-19 masks. In a November 2020 interview, he said: "What are these, like, nudists? I mean, you know, we ask you to wear pants, and no American says, or very few Americans say, that that's, like, some terrible thing."

Personal donations

Melinda Gates suggested that people should emulate the philanthropic efforts of the Salwen family, who sold their home and gave away half of its value, as detailed in their book, The Power of Half. Gates and his wife invited Joan Salwen to Seattle to speak about what the family had done, and on December 9, 2010, Bill and Melinda Gates and investor Warren Buffett each signed a commitment they called the "Giving Pledge", which is a commitment by all three to donate at least half of their wealth, over the course of time, to charity. The Foundation has received criticism, particularly over its role in Common Core, with critics stating the support is "cronyist" in that it profits from the "federal, state, and local contracts."

Gates has also provided personal donations to educational institutions. In 1999, Gates donated $20 million to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the construction of a computer laboratory named the "William H. Gates Building" that was designed by architect Frank Gehry. While Microsoft had previously given financial support to the institution, this was the first personal donation received from Gates.

The Maxwell Dworkin Laboratory of the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences is named after the mothers of both Gates and Microsoft President Steven A. Ballmer, both of whom were students (Ballmer was a member of the school's graduating class of 1977, while Gates left his studies for Microsoft), and donated funds for the laboratory's construction. Gates also donated $6 million to the construction of the Gates Computer Science Building, completed in January 1996, on the campus of Stanford University. The building contains the Computer Science Department and the Computer Systems Laboratory (CSL) of Stanford's Engineering department.

Since 2005, Gates and his foundation have taken an interest in solving global sanitation problems. For example, they announced the "Reinvent the Toilet Challenge", which has received considerable media interest. To raise awareness for the topic of sanitation and possible solutions, Gates drank water that was "produced from human feces" in 2014 – it was produced from a sewage sludge treatment process called the Omni Processor. In early 2015, he also appeared with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show and challenged him to see if he could taste the difference between this reclaimed water or bottled water.

In November 2017, Gates said he would give $50 million to the Dementia Discovery Fund, a venture capital fund that seeks treatment for Alzheimer's disease. He also pledged an additional $50 million to start-up ventures working in Alzheimer's research. Bill and Melinda Gates have said that they intend to leave their three children $10 million each as their inheritance. With only $30 million kept in the family, they are expected to give away about 99.96% of their wealth. On August 25, 2018, Gates distributed $600,000 through his foundation via UNICEF which is helping flood affected victims in Kerala, India.

In June 2018, Gates offered free ebooks, to all new graduates of U.S. colleges and universities, and in 2021, offered free ebooks, to all college and university students around the world. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation partially funds OpenStax, which creates and provides free digital textbooks. In July 2022 he reiterated the commitment he had made by starting the Giving Pledge campaign by announcing on his Twitter channel he planned to give 'virtually all' his wealth to charity and eventually 'move off of the list of the world's richest people.'

Charity sports events

In April 2017, Gates partnered with Swiss tennis player Roger Federer in playing in the Match for Africa 4, a noncompetitive tennis match at a sold-out Key Arena in Seattle. The event was in support of the Roger Federer Foundation's charity efforts in Africa. Federer and Gates played against John Isner, the top-ranked American player for much of this decade, and Mike McCready, the lead guitarist for Pearl Jam. The pair won the match 6 games to 4. Overall, they raised $2 million for children in Africa. The following year, Gates and Federer returned to play in the Match for Africa 5 on March 5, 2018, at San Jose's SAP Center. Their opponents were Jack Sock, one of the top American players and a grand slam winner in doubles, and Savannah Guthrie, a co-anchor for NBC's Today show. Gates and Federer recorded their second match victory together by a score of 6–3 and the event raised over $2.5 million.

Books

In 1989, Gates wrote the Foreword to the Microsoft Press book Learn BASIC Now, by Michael Halvorson and David Rygmyr, reflecting on the growth of the BASIC language and its use in most of the era's personal computers. He also sketched out plans for BASIC's use as a universal language to embellish or alter the performance of a range of software applications.

Gates has authored several books. The Road Ahead, co-authored with Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold and journalist Peter Rinearson, was published in November 1995. It summarized the implications of the personal computing revolution and described a future profoundly changed by the arrival of a global information superhighway. His second book, Business @ the Speed of Thought, co-authored with Collins Hemingway, was published in 1999, and discusses how business and technology are integrated, and shows how digital infrastructures and information networks can help to get an edge on the competition. In 2021 he published How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, which presents what Gates learned in over a decade of studying climate change and investing in innovations to address climate problems. Following the COVID-19 pandemic Gates published How to Prevent the Next Pandemic in 2022 which proposes a "Global Epidemic Response and Mobilization" (GERM) team with annual funding of $1 billion, under the auspices of the WHO.

The first of Gates's planned three memoirs, Source Code will be published in 2025.

Personal life

Gates is an avid reader, and the ceiling of his large home library is engraved with a quotation from The Great Gatsby. He also enjoys bridge, golf, and tennis. His days are planned for him on a minute-by-minute basis, similarly to the U.S. president's schedule. Despite his wealth and extensive business travel, Gates flew coach (economy class) in commercial aircraft until 1997, when he bought a private jet.

Gates purchased the Codex Leicester, a collection of scientific writings by Leonardo da Vinci, for US$30.8 million at an auction in 1994. In 1998, he reportedly paid $30 million for the original 1885 maritime painting Lost on the Grand Banks, at the time a record price for an American painting. In 2016, he revealed that he was color-blind. On May 10, 2022, Gates said that he tested positive for COVID-19 and was experiencing mild symptoms. Gates has received three doses of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Marriage, family and divorce

In 1987, at a trade fair in New York, Gates met Melinda French, a recent graduate of Duke University who had begun working at Microsoft around four months earlier. Gates and French became engaged in 1993 after dating for six years. They married on January 1, 1994, at the 12th hole of the Jack Nicklaus–designed Manele Golf Course on the Hawaiian Island of Lānaʻi. They had three children together: Jennifer Katherine Gates Nassar (born April 26, 1996), Rory John Gates (born May 23, 1999), and Phoebe Adele Gates (born September 14, 2002). The family resided in an earth-sheltered mansion in the side of a hill overlooking Lake Washington in Medina, Washington. In 2009, property taxes on the mansion were reported to be US$1.063 million, on a total assessed value of US$147.5 million. The 66,000-square-foot (6,100 m) estate has a 60-foot (18 m) swimming pool with an underwater music system, as well as a 2,500-square-foot (230 m) gym and a 1,000-square-foot (93 m) dining room.

On May 3, 2021, the couple announced their decision to divorce after more than 27 years of marriage. The Wall Street Journal reported that Melinda had begun meeting with divorce attorneys in 2019, citing interviews that suggested Gates's ties with Jeffrey Epstein were among her concerns. However, the couple delayed their divorce until their youngest daughter Phoebe had graduated from high school. The divorce was finalized on August 2, 2021, and the financial details have remained confidential. In February 2023, Gates confirmed that he was dating Paula Hurd, widow of former Oracle Corporation and Hewlett-Packard chief executive Mark Hurd. Gates became a grandfather in March 2023 when his eldest daughter Jennifer, who had married Olympic equestrian Nayel Nassar in October 2021, gave birth to a daughter. In October 2024, Jennifer gave birth to a second daughter.

Public image

Gates's public image has changed over the years. At first he was perceived as a brilliant but ruthless "robber baron", a "nerd-turned-tycoon". Starting in 2000 with the foundation of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and particularly after he stepped down as head of Microsoft, he turned his attention to philanthropy, spending more than $50 billion on causes like health, poverty, and education. His image morphed from "tyrannical technocrat to saintly savior" to a "huggable billionaire techno-philanthropist", celebrated on magazine covers and sought after for his opinions on major issues like global health and climate change. Still another shift in public opinion came in 2021 with the announcement that he and Melinda were divorcing. Coverage of that proceeding brought out information about romantic pursuits of women who worked for him, a long-term extra-marital affair, and a friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. This information and his response to the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in some deterioration of his public image, going from "a lovable nerd who was out to save the world" to "a tech supervillain who wants to protect profits over public health."

Investigative journalist Tim Schwab has accused Gates of using his contributions to the media to shape their coverage of him in order to protect his public image. In September 2022, Politico published an exposé critical of NGO leadership at the helm of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic response, written in cooperation with the German newspaper Die Welt. Criticisms included the interconnectivity of the non-profits with Gates, as well as his personal lack of formal credentials in medicine.

Gates and the projects of his foundation have been the subject of many conspiracy theories that proliferate on Facebook and elsewhere. He has been implausibly accused of attempting to depopulate the world, distributing harmful or unethical vaccines, and implanting people with privacy-violating microchips. These unfounded theories reached a new level of influence during the COVID-19 pandemic when, according to New York Times journalist Rory Smith, the uncertainties of pandemic life drove people to seek explanations from the Internet. When asked about the theories, Gates has remarked that some people are tempted by the "simple explanation" that an evil person rather than biological factors are to blame, and that he does not know for what purpose anyone believes he would want to track them with microchips.

Religious views

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Gates said in regard to his faith: "The moral systems of religion, I think, are super important. We've raised our kids in a religious way; they've gone to the Catholic church that Melinda goes to and I participate in. I've been very lucky, and therefore I owe it to try and reduce the inequity in the world. And that's kind of a religious belief. I mean, it's at least a moral belief." In the same 2014 interview he also said: "I agree with people like Richard Dawkins that mankind felt the need for creation myths. Before we really began to understand disease and the weather and things like that, we sought false explanations for them. Now science has filled in some of the realm – not all – that religion used to fill. But the mystery and the beauty of the world is overwhelmingly amazing, and there's no scientific explanation of how it came about. To say that it was generated by random numbers, that does seem, you know, sort of an uncharitable view . I think it makes sense to believe in God, but exactly what decision in your life you make differently because of it, I don't know."

Wealth

In 1987, Gates was listed as a billionaire in Forbes magazine's first ever America's richest issue; he was the world's youngest-ever self-made billionaire, with a net worth of $1.25 billion. Since then, he has been featured on The World's Billionaires list and was ranked as the richest person in 1995, 1996, 1998–2007, and 2009, maintaining the position until 2018, when Jeff Bezos surpassed his wealth. Gates was ranked first on the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans from 1993 to 2007, in 2009, and from 2014 to 2017. As of June 2024, he has an estimated net worth of US$154 billion, making him the sixth-richest person in the world according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Gates's wealth briefly surpassed US$100 billion in 1999, making him the first person to reach this net worth. After 2000, the nominal value of his Microsoft holdings declined, partly because of the decline in Microsoft's stock price after the dot-com bubble burst, and partly because of the multi-billion dollar donations he had made to his charitable foundations. In May 2006, Gates remarked that he wished that he were not the richest man in the world, because he disliked the attention that it brought. In March 2010, Gates was the second wealthiest person after Carlos Slim, but regained the top position in 2013, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Slim regained the position again in June 2014 (but then lost the top position back to Gates). Between 2009 and 2014, his wealth doubled from US$40 billion to US$82 billion. In October 2017, Gates was surpassed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as the richest person in the world. In the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans in 2023, he was ranked sixth with a wealth of $115.0 billion. He once again became the richest person in the world in November 2019 after a 48% increase in Microsoft shares, surpassing Bezos. Gates told the BBC, "I've paid more tax than any individual ever, and gladly so ... I've paid over $6 billion in taxes." He is a proponent of higher taxes, particularly for the rich.

Gates has several investments outside Microsoft, which in 2006 paid him a salary of US$616,667 and a bonus of US$350,000, for a total of US$966,667. In 1989, he founded Corbis, a digital imaging company. In 2004, he became a board member of Berkshire Hathaway, the investment company headed by long-time friend Warren Buffett.

Controversies

Antitrust litigation

During his tenure as CEO of Microsoft, Gates approved of many decisions that led to antitrust litigation over Microsoft's business practices. In the 1998 United States v. Microsoft case, Gates gave deposition testimony that several journalists characterized as evasive. He argued with examiner David Boies over the contextual meaning of words such as "compete", "concerned", and "we". Later in the year, when portions of the videotaped deposition were played back in court, the judge was seen laughing and shaking his head. BusinessWeek reported:

Early rounds of his deposition show him offering obfuscatory answers and saying "I don't recall" so many times that even the presiding judge had to chuckle. Worse, many of the technology chief's denials and pleas of ignorance were directly refuted by prosecutors with snippets of e-mail that Gates both sent and received.

Gates later said that he had simply resisted attempts by Boies to mischaracterize his words and actions. "Did I fence with Boies? ... I plead guilty ... rudeness to Boies in the first degree." Despite Gates's denials, the judge ruled that Microsoft had committed monopolization, tying and blocking competition, each in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

Treatment of colleagues and employees

Gates had primary responsibility for Microsoft's product strategy from the company's founding in 1975 until 2006. He gained a reputation for being distant from others; an industry executive complained in 1981 that "Gates is notorious for not being reachable by phone and for not returning phone calls." An Atari executive recalled that he showed Gates a game and defeated him 35 of 37 times. When they met again a month later, Gates "won or tied every game. He had studied the game until he solved it. That is a competitor".

In the early 1980s, while business partner Paul Allen was undergoing treatments for cancer, Gates—according to Allen—conspired to reduce Allen’s share in Microsoft by issuing himself stock options. In his autobiography, Allen would later recall that Gates was "scheming to rip me off. It was mercenary opportunism plain and simple". Gates says he remembers the episode differently. Allen would also recall that Gates was prone to shouting episodes.

Gates has often been accused of bullying Microsoft employees. He met regularly with Microsoft's senior managers and program managers, and the managers described him as being verbally combative, berating them for perceived holes in their business strategies or proposals that placed the company's long-term interests at risk. Gates saw competition in personal terms; when Borland's Turbo Pascal performed better than Microsoft's own tools, he yelled at programming director Greg Whitten "for half an hour" because, Gates believed, Borland's Philippe Kahn had surpassed Gates. Gates interrupted presentations with such comments as "that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard" and "why don't you just give up your options and join the Peace Corps?" The target of his outburst would then have to defend the proposal in detail until Gates was fully convinced. Not all harsh language was criticism; a manager recalled that "You're full of shit. That's the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard" meant that Gates was amazed. "In the lore of Microsoft, if Bill says that to you, you're made". When subordinates appeared to be procrastinating, he was known to remark sarcastically, "I'll do it over the weekend".

Relationship with Jeffrey Epstein

A 2019 New York Times article reported that Gates's relationship with financier Jeffrey Epstein started in 2011, just a few years after Epstein was convicted for procuring a child for prostitution, and continued for some years, including a visit to Epstein's house with his wife in the fall of 2013, despite her declared discomfort. Gates said in 2011 about Epstein: "His lifestyle is very different and kind of intriguing although it would not work for me".

The depth of the friendship between Gates and Epstein is unclear though Gates generally commented that "I met him. I didn't have any business relationship or friendship with him". However, Gates visited Epstein "many times, despite past". It was reported that Epstein and Gates "discussed the Gates Foundation and philanthropy". However, in an interview in 2019 Gates completely denied any connection between Epstein and the Gates Foundation or his philanthropy generally. In August 2021, Gates said the reason he had meetings with Epstein was because Gates hoped Epstein could provide money for philanthropic work, though nothing came of the idea. Gates added, "It was a huge mistake to spend time with him, to give him the credibility of being there." Gates came under further scrutiny after it was revealed that he had travelled on Epstein's private jet, though further claims about Gates travelling to Little St James proved unsubstantiated.

It has also been reported that Epstein and Gates met with Nobel Committee chair Thorbjørn Jagland at his residence in Strasbourg, France, in March 2013 to discuss the Nobel Prize. Also in attendance were representatives of the International Peace Institute which has received millions in grants from the Gates Foundation, including a $2.5 million "community engagement" grant in October 2013. In 2023, it was reported that Epstein threatened to expose an alleged affair Gates had with a Russian bridge player.

Recognition

• Time magazine listed Gates as one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century in 1999, as well as one of the 100 most influential people in 2004, 2005, and 2006 respectively.
• Time also collectively named Gates, his wife Melinda and U2's lead singer Bono as the 2005 Persons of the Year for their humanitarian efforts. In 2006, he was voted eighth in the list of "Heroes of our time" published by New Statesman.
• Gates was listed in the Sunday Times power list in 1999, named CEO of the year by Chief Executive Officers magazine in 1994, ranked number one in the "Top 50 Cyber Elite" by Time in 1998, ranked number two in the Upside Elite 100 in 1999, and was also included in The Guardian as one of the "Top 100 influential people in media" in 2001.
• Gates has received honorary doctorates from Nyenrode Business Universiteit (1996), KTH Royal Institute of Technology (2002), Waseda University (2005), Tsinghua University (2007), Harvard University (2007), the Karolinska Institute (2007), the University of Cambridge (2009), and Northern Arizona University (2023). He was also made an honorary trustee of Peking University in 2007.
• In 1994, he was honored as the 20th Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society (DFBCS). In 1999, Gates received New York Institute of Technology's President's Medal.
• Gates was elected a Member of the US National Academy of Engineering in 1996 "for contributions to the founding and development of personal computing".
• Entomologists named Bill Gates' flower fly, Eristalis gatesi, in his honor in 1997.
• He was awarded American Library Association Honorary Membership in 1998.
• In 2002, Bill and Melinda Gates received the Jefferson Award for Greatest Public Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged.
• Gates was made an Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in 2005.
• He was given the 2006 James C. Morgan Global Humanitarian Award from the Tech Awards.
• In January 2006, he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Prince Henry by the then President of Portugal Jorge Sampaio.
• In November 2006, he was awarded the Placard of the Order of the Aztec Eagle, together with his wife Melinda who was awarded the Insignia of the same order, both for their philanthropic work around the world in the areas of health and education, particularly in Mexico, and specifically in the program "Un país de lectores".
• Gates received the 2010 Bower Award for Business Leadership from The Franklin Institute for his achievements at Microsoft and his philanthropic work.
• Also in 2010, he was honored with the Silver Buffalo Award by the Boy Scouts of America, its highest award for adults, for his service to youth.
• According to Forbes, Gates was ranked as the fourth most powerful person in the world in 2012, up from fifth in 2011.
• In 2015, Gates and his wife Melinda received the Padma Bhushan, India's third-highest civilian award for their social work in the country.
• In 2016, Barack Obama honored Bill and Melinda Gates with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for their philanthropic efforts.
• In 2017, François Hollande awarded Bill and Melinda Gates with France's highest national order, as Commanders in the Legion of Honour, for their charity efforts.
• He was elected a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering in 2017.
• In 2019, Gates was awarded the Professor Hawking Fellowship of the Cambridge Union in the University of Cambridge.
• In 2020, Gates received the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun for his contributions to Japan and the world in regard to worldwide technological transformation and advancement of global health.
• In 2021, Gates was nominated at the 11th annual Streamy Awards for the crossover for his personal YouTube channel.
• In 2022, Gates received the Hilal-e-Pakistan, the second-highest civilian award in Pakistan for his social work in the country.

Depiction in media

Documentary films about Gates

External videos
The Machine That Changed The World; Interview with Bill Gates, 1990 (raw video), 44:03, Open Vault WGBH

• The Machine That Changed the World (1990)
• Triumph of the Nerds (1996)
• Nerds 2.0.1 (1998)
• Waiting for "Superman" (2010)
• The Virtual Revolution (2010)
• Inside Bill's Brain: Decoding Bill Gates (2019)

Feature films

• 1999: Pirates of Silicon Valley, a film that chronicles the rise of Apple and Microsoft from the early 1970s to 1997. Gates is portrayed by Anthony Michael Hall.
• 2002: Nothing So Strange, a mockumentary featuring Gates as the subject of a modern assassination. Gates briefly appears at the start, played by Steve Sires.
• 2010: The Social Network, a film that chronicles the development of Facebook. Gates is portrayed by Steve Sires.
• 2015: Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates: The Competition to Control the Personal Computer, 1974–1999: Original film from the National Geographic Channel for the American Genius series.

Video and film clips

• 1983: Steve Jobs hosts Gates and others in the "Macintosh dating game" at the Macintosh pre-launch event (a parody of the television game show The Dating Game)
• 1991: Gates spoke to the Berkeley Macintosh Users Group lively weekly Thursday night meeting with questions and answers in PSL Hall (renamed Pimentel Hall in 1994) at University of California, Berkeley
• 2007: Steve Jobs and Bill Gates Together at the D5 Conference on YouTube, All Things Digital
• Since 2009, Gates has given numerous TED talks on current concerns such as innovation, education and fighting global diseases

Radio

Gates was the guest on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs on January 31, 2016, in which he talked about his relationships with his father and Steve Jobs, meeting Melinda Ann French, the start of Microsoft and some of his habits (for example reading The Economist "from cover to cover every week"). His choice of things to take on a desert island were, for music: "Blue Skies" by Willie Nelson; a book: The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker; and luxury item: a DVD Collection of Lectures from The Teaching Company.

Television

Gates starred as himself in a brief appearance on the Frasier episode “The Two Hundredth Episode". He also made a guest appearance as himself on the TV show The Big Bang Theory, in an episode titled "The Gates Excitation". He also appeared in a cameo role in 2019 on the series finale of Silicon Valley. Gates was parodied in The Simpsons episode "Das Bus". In 2023, Gates was the interviewee in an episode of the Amol Rajan Interviews series on BBC Two, and was the subject of an episode of the UK Channel 4 series The Billionaires Who Made Our World.

See also

• Big History Project
• List of richest Americans in history

Notes

1. Gates regularly documents his share ownership through public U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Form 4 filings.
2. His father was named William H. Gates II, but he is now generally known as William H. Gates, Senior to avoid confusion with his son.

References

1. MSFT (Holdings), NASDAQ, archived from the original on October 19, 2011, retrieved April 10, 2016
2. MSFT (Symbol), NASDAQ, archived from the original on April 8, 2016, retrieved April 10, 2016
3. "Bill Gates (American computer programmer, businessman, and philanthropist)". Archived from the original on March 28, 2013. Retrieved March 20, 2013.
4. "Mary Gates, 64; Helped Her Son Start Microsoft". The New York Times. June 11, 1994. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on April 20, 2016. Retrieved April 3, 2020.
5. "Microsoft founder Bill Gates has Yorkshire roots". The Telegraph. June 23, 2020.
6. Manes 1994, p. 15.
7. ^ Leibovich, Mark (December 31, 2000). "Alter Egos". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on December 25, 2016. Retrieved June 24, 2019.
8. Lange, Greg; Stein, Alan (February 14, 1999). "Tornado with 100-m.p.h. winds hits Seattle and Juanita on September 28, 1962". HistoryLink. Archived from the original on October 19, 2016. Retrieved December 18, 2018.
9. Manes 1994, p. 47.
10. Lesinski, Jeanne M (2008). Bill Gates: Entrepreneur and Philanthropist. Twenty First Century Books. p. 12. ISBN 978-1-58013-570-2. Retrieved March 10, 2011.
11. Lowe, Janet (2001). Bill Gates Speaks: Insight from the World's Greatest Entrepreneur. Wiley. ISBN 978-0-471-40169-8. Archived from the original on May 7, 2024. Retrieved March 10, 2011.
12. Berkowitz, Edward D (2006). Something happened: A political and cultural overview of the seventies. Columbia University Press. p. 228. ISBN 978-0-231-12494-2. Retrieved March 10, 2011.
13. Cringely, Robert X. (June 1996). "Part II". Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires. Season 1. PBS. Archived from the original on August 13, 2017.
14. Manes 1994, p. 24.
15. Soundaian, S. (June 10, 2019). New Dimensions of Management. MJP Publisher. Archived from the original on May 7, 2024. Retrieved October 14, 2020.
16. Manes 1994, p. 27.
17. Gates 1996, p. 12.
18. Manes 1994, p. 34.
19. Gates 1996, p. 14.
20. Schuman, Michael A. (2008). Bill Gates: Computer Mogul and Philanthropist. Enslow Publishers, Inc. p. 34. ISBN 978-0-7660-2693-3.
21. Sims, Marcie (2018). Capitol Hill Pages: Young Witnesses to 200 Years of History. McFarland. p. 196. ISBN 978-1-4766-6972-4. Archived from the original on May 7, 2024. Retrieved May 5, 2018.
22. "National Merit Scholarship Corporation – Scholars You May Know". nationalmerit.org. Archived from the original on February 28, 2016. Retrieved October 25, 2015.
23. "The new – and improved? – SAT". The Week. Archived from the original on May 10, 2006. Retrieved May 23, 2006.
24. Gates 1996, p. 15.
25. "Timeline: Bill Gates: 1973; from google (bill gates major in harvard) result 3". NPR. Archived from the original on October 5, 2015.
26. Hitt, Michael; Ireland, R. Duane; Hoskisson, Robert (2012). Strategic Management: Concepts and Cases: Competitiveness and Globalization. Cengage Learning. p. 263. ISBN 978-1-111-82587-4. Archived from the original on May 7, 2024. Retrieved October 25, 2015.
27. Mejia, Zameena (April 29, 2018). "The No. 1 thing Bill Gates wishes he'd done in college". CNBC. Archived from the original on March 3, 2020. Retrieved April 3, 2020.
28. ^ Kestenbaum, David (July 4, 2008). "Before Microsoft, Gates solved a pancake problem". National Public Radio. Archived from the original on September 19, 2011.
29. "UT Dallas Team Bests Young Bill Gates With Improved Answer to So-Called Pancake Problem in Mathematics". University of Texas at Dallas. September 17, 2008. Archived from the original on August 26, 2010.
30. Gates, William; Papadimitriou, Christos (1979). "Bounds for sorting by prefix reversal". Discrete Mathematics. 27 (1): 47–57. doi:10.1016/0012-365X(79)90068-2. ISSN 0012-365X.
31. Wallace 1993, p. 59.
32. Gates 1996, p. 18.
33. Gates 1996, p. 19.
34. The History of Microsoft – 1976 Archived February 11, 2017, at the Wayback Machine: Bill Gates explaining that his departure from Harvard was reversible if Microsoft had failed.
35. ^ "Microsoft Visitor Center Student Information: Key Events in Microsoft History". Microsoft. Archived from the original (.DOC) on February 26, 2008. Retrieved February 18, 2008.
36. ^ "Microsoft history". The History of Computing Project. Archived from the original on May 14, 2008. Retrieved March 31, 2008.
37. Manes 1994, p. 81.
38. Gates, William 'Bill' (October 13, 2005). Remarks (Speech). Waterloo, ON. Archived from the original on April 6, 2008. Retrieved March 31, 2008.
39. "Bill Gates Speech Transcript – Tech Ed 2001". Microsoft. Archived from the original on February 13, 2012.
40. "Folklore.org: Donkey". www.folklore.org. Archived from the original on August 3, 2004. Retrieved May 5, 2021.
41. ^ Bunnell, David (February–March 1982). "The Man Behind The Machine?". PC Magazine (interview). p. 16. Archived from the original on May 9, 2013. Retrieved February 17, 2012.
42. "Mary Gates, 64; helped her son start Microsoft". The New York Times. (obituary). June 11, 1994. Archived from the original on April 20, 2016. Retrieved May 2, 2016.
43. Gordon, John Steele; Maiello, Michael (December 23, 2002). "Pioneers Die Broke". Forbes. Archived from the original on October 29, 2006. Retrieved March 31, 2008.
44. "Father of DOS". Paterson Technology. Archived from the original on September 6, 2019. Retrieved October 13, 2019.
45. "The Roots of DOS". Paterson Technology. Archived from the original on September 6, 2019. Retrieved October 13, 2019.
46. ^ Gates 1996, p. 54.
47. Manes 1994, p. 193.
48. Allen, Paul (May 2011). "Microsoft's Odd Couple". Vanity Fair. Archived from the original on January 3, 2020. Retrieved November 11, 2019.
49. Detrick, Hallie (October 16, 2018). "Bill Gates Mourns His Microsoft Co-Founder Paul Allen: 'Personal Computing Would Not Have Existed Without Him'". Fortune. Archived from the original on November 12, 2019. Retrieved November 11, 2019.
50. Hartmans, Avery; Weinberger, Matt (April 1, 2021). "A history of the decades-long feud between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, whose love-hate relationship spurred the success of Microsoft and Apple". Insider Inc. Business Insider. Archived from the original on March 10, 2016. Retrieved April 15, 2021.
51. "Challenges and Strategy" (PDF). Groklaw. Archived (PDF) from the original on August 12, 2013. Retrieved November 17, 2011.
52. Coursey, David (October 25, 2001). "The 10 top things you MUST know about Win XP". ZDNet. CNET Networks. Archived from the original on December 8, 2015. Retrieved July 22, 2008.
53. David, Javier E (February 5, 2014). "Nadella named new Microsoft CEO as Gates era ends". NBCNews.com. NBCUniversal. Archived from the original on February 5, 2014.
54. Gates, Bill. "Bill Gates Interview". Transcript of a Video History Interview / Computer History Collection (Interview). Interviewed by David Allison. National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. Archived from the original on April 2, 2013. Retrieved April 10, 2013.
55. ^ Gates, Bill (September 26, 1997). Remarks by Bill Gates (Speech). San Diego. Archived from the original on April 20, 2008. Retrieved March 31, 2008.
56. Pournelle, Jerry (September 1985). "PCs, Peripherals, Programs, and People". Byte. p. 347. Retrieved March 20, 2016.
57. Lesinski 2006, p. 96; Manes 1994, p. 459.
58. "Microsoft Announces Plans for July 2008 Transition for Bill Gates". Microsoft. June 15, 2006. Archived from the original on June 19, 2006.
59. "Bill Gates | Development of Information and Knowledge Management". tlu.ee. Archived from the original on January 26, 2016. Retrieved January 21, 2016.
60. "Bill Gates steps down as chairman, will assist new CEO as 'technology advisor'". The Verge. Archived from the original on February 4, 2014. Retrieved February 4, 2014.
61. "Microsoft names Satya Nadella to replace Steve Ballmer". BBC News. February 4, 2014. Archived from the original on February 4, 2014. Retrieved February 4, 2014.
62. Goodell, Jeff (March 13, 2014). "Bill Gates: The Rolling Stone Interview". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on March 17, 2014. Retrieved March 28, 2014.
63. Mack, Eric (January 28, 2015). "Bill Gates Says You Should Worry About Artificial Intelligence". Forbes. Archived from the original on February 19, 2015. Retrieved February 19, 2015.
64. Lumby, Andrew (January 28, 2015). "Bill Gates Is Worried About the Rise of the Machines". The Fiscal Times. Archived from the original on February 19, 2015. Retrieved February 19, 2015.
65. Holley, Peter (March 24, 2015). "Apple co-founder on artificial intelligence: 'The future is scary and very bad for people'". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on April 17, 2015. Retrieved April 8, 2015.
66. "Permalink to an answer from "Hi Reddit, I'm Bill Gates and I'm back for my third AMA. Ask me anything. • /r/IAmA"". reddit. January 28, 2015. Archived from the original on December 31, 2015. Retrieved June 10, 2015.
67. "Baidu CEO Robin Li interviews Bill Gates and Elon Musk at the Boao Forum, March 29, 2015". YouTube. March 31, 2015. Archived from the original on May 1, 2015. Retrieved April 8, 2015.
68. Gates, Bill (April 3, 2015). "The next outbreak? We're not ready". TED. Archived from the original on February 7, 2020. Retrieved June 8, 2020.
69. (March 31, 2018), "Saudi Crown Prince and Bill Gates review joint development projects" Archived December 2, 2020, at the Wayback Machine Al Arabiya
70. Michael Idato (April 4, 2018), "Prince Mohammed books out hotel to dine with Murdoch" Archived May 23, 2018, at the Wayback Machine The Sydney Morning Herald
71. Scipioni, Jade (June 24, 2019). "Bill Gates reveals his 'greatest mistake' that potentially cost Microsoft $400 billion". CNBC. Archived from the original on June 24, 2019. Retrieved December 22, 2019.
72. "Leadership". Bloomberg New Economy. Archived from the original on October 5, 2022. Retrieved September 30, 2023.
73. Haselton, Todd (March 13, 2020). "Bill Gates leaves Microsoft board". CNBC. Archived from the original on March 13, 2020. Retrieved March 13, 2020.
74. Glazer, Emily; Baer, Justin; Safdar, Khadeeja; Tilley, Aaron (May 16, 2021). "Bill Gates Left Microsoft Board Amid Probe Into Prior Relationship With Staffer". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on May 17, 2021.
75. ^ Schwab, Tim (August 21, 2020). "Journalism's Gates keepers". Columbia Journalism Review. Archived from the original on August 21, 2020. Retrieved April 5, 2021.
76. "Gates Foundation Commits $100 Million to Speeding Up Coronavirus Treatments and Response". Good News Network. March 10, 2020. Archived from the original on March 11, 2020. Retrieved April 22, 2021.
77. "Bill Gates and Dr. Fauci talk regularly — here's what they're discussing now". CNBC.com. February 11, 2021. Archived from the original on February 11, 2021. Retrieved May 3, 2021.
78. "Bill Gates Cuts His Stake in AutoNation Stock". Barron's. October 9, 2021. Archived from the original on January 14, 2023. Retrieved January 14, 2023.
79. Marshall Kirpatric (October 22, 2008). "Bill Gates Has Started a New Company, bgC3". The New York Times. Archived from the original on October 28, 2008. Retrieved February 25, 2022.
80. "Bill Gates now biggest CN shareholder (CA;CNR)". CBC News. April 25, 2011. Archived from the original on April 27, 2011. Retrieved November 17, 2019.
81. "Cascade Investment (Bill and Melinda Gates Investments (BMGI)) – Family Office, United States – SWFI". Archived from the original on June 29, 2020. Retrieved September 19, 2022.
82. "Bill Gates: America's Top Farmland Owner | The Land Report". landreport.com. January 11, 2021. Archived from the original on January 11, 2021. Retrieved February 11, 2021.
83. "Bill Gates is the biggest private owner of farmland in the United States. Why? | Nick Estes". The Guardian. April 5, 2021. Archived from the original on April 5, 2021. Retrieved April 5, 2021.
84. Weinberger, Hannah. "Bill Gates is investing big in American farmland | Crosscut". crosscut.com. Archived from the original on February 10, 2021. Retrieved February 11, 2021.
85. Hamilton, Tyler (October 8, 2015). "Snatching CO2 back from the air". The Toronto Star. Toronto Star Newspapers Ltd. Archived from the original on October 29, 2015. Retrieved November 6, 2015.
86. Eisenberg, Anne (January 4, 2013). "Pulling Carbon Dioxide Out of Thin Air". The New York Times. Archived from the original on January 8, 2013. Retrieved December 3, 2015.
87. Gunther, Marc. "The business of cooling the planet". Fortune. Archived from the original on September 28, 2022. Retrieved April 18, 2021.
88. Brigham, Katie (June 22, 2019). "Bill Gates and Big Oil back this company that's trying to solve climate change by sucking CO2 out of the air". CNBC LLC. Archived from the original on September 22, 2022. Retrieved April 18, 2021.
89. Tollefson, J. (2018). "doi". Nature. 563 (7733): 613–615. doi:10.1038/d41586-018-07533-4. PMID 30479388.
90. "Corbis Images Sold by Bill Gates to Visual China Group | PetaPixel". petapixel.com. January 22, 2016. Archived from the original on January 24, 2016. Retrieved June 6, 2021.
91. "Bill Gates, Airbus and SoftBank invest in satellite video startup that wants to help us 'see and understand the Earth live and unfiltered'". GeekWire. April 18, 2018. Archived from the original on April 22, 2018. Retrieved May 25, 2021.
92. Clark, Heather (January 2008). "Eclipse Aviation Gets Foreign Investment". Archived from the original on May 17, 2008. Retrieved January 21, 2023.
93. Gilchrist, Karen (March 7, 2019). "How Impossible Burger's 'simple' vision won hundreds of millions in funding — and backing from Bill Gates". CNBC LLC. Archived from the original on September 22, 2022. Retrieved April 18, 2021.
94. Strom, Stephanie (August 8, 2017). "Impossible Burger's 'Secret Sauce' Highlights Challenges of Food Tech". The New York Times. Archived from the original on August 8, 2017.
95. "Beyond the Headlines: A Clarification Regarding Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods". Beyond Meat. August 15, 2017. Archived from the original on December 7, 2021. Retrieved April 18, 2021.
96. Tribune, Patrick Kennedy Star. "Bill Gates' investment firm increases its ownership in Ecolab". Star Tribune. Archived from the original on March 13, 2018. Retrieved October 5, 2021.
97. Levy, Jared Ari (June 4, 2013). "Bill Gates Joins $35 Million Funding in Startup ResearchGate". Bloomberg. Archived from the original on January 9, 2015. Retrieved January 28, 2015.
98. "Bill Gates Talks About the Potential of Nuclear Innovation on '60 Minutes'". Nuclear Energy Institute. February 17, 2021. Archived from the original on February 17, 2021. Retrieved April 21, 2021.
99. Clifford, Catherine (April 8, 2021). "How Bill Gates' company TerraPower is building next-generation nuclear power". CNBC. Archived from the original on April 8, 2021. Retrieved April 20, 2021.
100. Carpenter, Scott. "Bill Gates' Nuclear Startup Unveils Mini-Reactor Design Including Molten Salt Energy Storage". Forbes. Archived from the original on September 1, 2020. Retrieved April 20, 2021.
101. Mufson, Steven. "Bill Gates comes to Washington — selling the promise of nuclear energy". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Archived from the original on February 21, 2021. Retrieved April 22, 2021.
102. Gardner, Timothy (August 28, 2020). "Bill Gates' nuclear venture plans reactor to complement solar, wind power boom". Reuters. Archived from the original on April 22, 2021. Retrieved April 22, 2021.
103. Aronoff, Kate (March 3, 2021). "The Dark Side of Bill Gates's Climate Techno-Optimism". The New Republic. Archived from the original on April 20, 2021. Retrieved April 20, 2021.
104. "Ginkgo Bioworks raises $350 million fund for biotech spinouts". Reuters. October 9, 2019. Archived from the original on April 27, 2021. Retrieved April 27, 2021.
105. Field, Matthew (July 18, 2021). "Bill Gates and George Soros join buyout of UK Covid testing company". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on January 10, 2022.
106. ^ Wattles, Jackie (November 11, 2015). "Bill Gates launches multi-billion dollar clean energy fund". CNN Money. Archived from the original on December 1, 2015. Retrieved December 12, 2020.
107. "Q&A: Bill Gates on the World's Energy Crisis". Wired. Vol. 19, no. 7. June 20, 2011. Archived from the original on May 17, 2020. Retrieved October 2, 2019.
108. Gates, Bill (November 30, 2015). "Energy Innovation: Why We Need It and How to Get It". Gates Notes. Archived from the original on June 5, 2020. Retrieved December 12, 2020.
109. ^ Thornhill, John; Adams, Christopher (June 25, 2015). "Gates to double investment in renewable energy projects". Financial Times. Archived from the original on December 10, 2022. Retrieved December 12, 2020.
110. Schlosser, Kurt (December 3, 2020). "Bill Gates calls for creation of National Institutes of Energy Innovation to better address climate change". GeekWire. Archived from the original on December 3, 2020. Retrieved December 12, 2020.
111. Listek, Vanesa (February 19, 2021). "Redefine Meat Raises $29M to Grow its 3D Printed Alt-Meat Portfolio". 3DR HOLDINGS. 3D Print. Archived from the original on September 23, 2022. Retrieved April 14, 2021.
112. "Bill Gates joins Blackstone in bid to buy British private jet services firm". The Guardian. January 9, 2021. Archived from the original on January 9, 2021. Retrieved February 2, 2021.
113. "Bill Gates shows how hard it can be to divest from fossil fuel". The Edge Markets. February 15, 2021. Archived from the original on February 16, 2021. Retrieved February 17, 2021.
114. "Reviewed: "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster" by Bill Gates, "The Ministry for the Future" by Kim Stanley Robinson, and "Under a White Sky" by Elizabeth Kolbert". MIT Technology Review. Archived from the original on February 16, 2021. Retrieved March 8, 2021.
115. Hirsh, Sophie (April 5, 2022). "Bill Gates' New Doc, 'Solving for Zero,' Showcases Climate Change Solutions That Could Actually Work". Green Matters. Archived from the original on April 14, 2023. Retrieved April 14, 2023.
116. "Bill Gates' next generation nuclear reactor to be built in Wyoming". Arab News. Reuters. June 3, 2021. Archived from the original on June 3, 2021. Retrieved June 3, 2021.
117. Rathi, Akshat; A Dlouhy, Jennifer (August 2022). "Bill Gates and the Secret Push to Save Biden's Climate Bill". Bloomberg. Archived from the original on August 18, 2022. Retrieved September 19, 2022.
118. Gates, Bill (August 5, 2022). "Opinion | Bill Gates: We're on the Verge of a Remarkable Moment for Congress and the Country". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on October 24, 2022. Retrieved October 24, 2022.
119. Morimoto, Tianna (May 2023). "Microsoft founder Bill Gates honored at Northern Arizona University graduation". Arizona's Family. Archived from the original on May 19, 2023. Retrieved May 19, 2023.
120. Schleifer, Theodore (October 22, 2024). "Bill Gates Privately Says He Has Backed Harris With $50 Million Donation". The New York Times. Retrieved October 22, 2024.
121. ^ Zahn, Max; Serwer, Andy (February 18, 2021). "Bill Gates: Permanent Facebook ban of Trump would be 'a shame'". Yahoo! Finance. Archived from the original on October 16, 2021. Retrieved November 7, 2021.
122. Taylor, Stuart Jr. (November 1, 1993). "What To Do With The Microsoft Monster". The American Lawyer. Archived from the original on October 23, 2020. Retrieved September 11, 2021.
123. Kilander, Gustaf (April 26, 2021). Written at Washington, D.C.. "Bill Gates under fire for saying vaccine formulas shouldn't be shared with developing world". The Independent. London. Archived from the original on April 26, 2021. Retrieved May 20, 2021.
124. Cao, Sissi (April 28, 2021). "Bill Gates' Comments On COVID-19 Vaccine Patent Draw Outrage". Observer. Archived from the original on January 2, 2022. Retrieved January 2, 2022.
125. ^ Allison, Simon (January 30, 2021). "Bill Gates, Big Pharma and entrenching the vaccine apartheid". The Mail & Guardian. Archived from the original on January 2, 2022. Retrieved January 2, 2022.
126. ^ Mookim, Mohit (May 19, 2021). "The World Loses Under Bill Gates' Vaccine Colonialism". Wired. Archived from the original on December 24, 2021. Retrieved January 2, 2022.
127. Hancock, Jay (August 25, 2020). "They Pledged to Donate Rights to Their COVID Vaccine, Then Sold Them to Pharma". Kaiser Health News. Archived from the original on February 7, 2021. Retrieved January 2, 2022.
128. Rachel Sandler (May 19, 2022). "Bill Gates explains why he doesn't own any cryptocurrency". Forbes. Archived from the original on May 19, 2022. Retrieved May 22, 2022.
129. "Gates foundation". Archived from the original on May 23, 2012.
130. Toal, Robin (September 16, 2013). "The Top Ten US Charitable Foundations". Funds For NGOs. Funds For NGOs, LLC. Archived from the original on April 7, 2014. Retrieved April 6, 2014.
131. Cronin, Jon (January 25, 2005). "Bill Gates: billionaire philanthropist". BBC News. Archived from the original on October 15, 2007. Retrieved April 1, 2008.
132. "Our Approach to Giving". Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Archived from the original on April 4, 2008. Retrieved April 1, 2008.
133. "Bill Gates – Carnegie Mellon University". Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Archived from the original on January 6, 2019. Retrieved January 27, 2019.
134. University, Carnegie Mellon. "Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Builds Carnegie Mellon's Home for Computer Science". cmu.edu. Archived from the original on January 6, 2019. Retrieved January 27, 2019.
135. 2005 Annual Report (PDF). Rockefeller Brothers Fund. January 1, 2006. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 16, 2008. Retrieved February 14, 2008.
136. "What We Do". Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. 2014. Archived from the original on April 3, 2014. Retrieved April 6, 2014.
137. "Agricultural Development Golden Rice". Archived from the original on February 3, 2016. Retrieved February 3, 2016.
138. "Family Planning". www.gatesfoundation.org. January 1, 2001. Archived from the original on February 27, 2013. Retrieved October 29, 2019.
139. "Dark cloud over good works of Gates Foundation". Los Angeles Times. January 7, 2007. Archived from the original on September 19, 2008., Los Angeles Times, January 7, 2006.
140. Heim, Kristi (January 10, 2007). "Gates Foundation to review investments". The Seattle Times. Archived from the original on May 16, 2007.
141. Piller, Charles (January 14, 2007). "Gates Foundation to keep its investment approach". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on October 21, 2020. Retrieved October 19, 2020.
142. ^ "Pandemic, though terrible, helped push digital financial revolution: Bill Gates". Business Times. Singapore. December 8, 2020. Archived from the original on December 8, 2020. Retrieved December 9, 2020.
143. Miller, Anna Medaris (November 16, 2020). "Bill Gates says he doesn't understand anti-maskers: 'What are these, like, nudists?'". Insider Inc. Business Insider. Archived from the original on September 23, 2022. Retrieved March 15, 2021.
144. Abraham, Bina (October 1, 2010). "They half it in them". Gulf News. Archived from the original on January 21, 2011. Retrieved March 17, 2011.
145. Moss, Rosabeth (December 14, 2010). "Four Strategic Generosity Lessons". Business Week. Archived from the original on February 25, 2011. Retrieved March 9, 2011.
146. "40 billionaires pledge to give away half of wealth". NBC News. August 4, 2010. Archived from the original on June 10, 2013. Retrieved August 8, 2010.
147. Robyn Griggs Lawrence (February 22, 2011). "A Rich Gift: Homemade Jelly for Bill and Melinda Gates". Mother Earth News. Archived from the original on February 24, 2011. Retrieved March 10, 2011.
148. Sower, Craig (March 14, 2014). "Common Core's Leviathan | Craig Sower". THINK.IAFOR.ORG. Archived from the original on December 31, 2023. Retrieved December 31, 2023.
149. "The Organization Named Achieve: Cradle of Common Core Cronyism" (PDF). Department of Education. Archived (PDF) from the original on December 31, 2023. Retrieved December 31, 2023.
150. "Melinda Gates says Common Core pushback propelled by changing too much, too fast". PBS NewsHour. October 7, 2015. Archived from the original on December 31, 2023. Retrieved December 31, 2023.
151. "Schoolchildren Are Not 'Mere Creatures of the State'". Commentary Magazine. August 16, 2022. Archived from the original on December 31, 2023. Retrieved December 31, 2023.
152. Matthew G.H. Chun (April 14, 1999). "Bill Gates Donates $20 million to MIT". The Harvard Crimson. Archived from the original on April 7, 2014. Retrieved April 6, 2014.
153. "Our Campus – Teaching, research, and administrative spaces". Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. President and Fellows of Harvard College. 2014. Archived from the original on April 7, 2014. Retrieved April 6, 2014.
154. "Gates Computer Science Building". Stanford Engineering. Stanford University. 2014. Archived from the original on April 1, 2014. Retrieved April 6, 2014.
155. Kass, Jason (November 18, 2013). "Bill Gates Can't Build a Toilet". Opinion Pages. The New York Times. Archived from the original on March 25, 2015. Retrieved March 24, 2015.
156. "BBC news article "Bill Gates drinks water distilled from human faeces"". BBC News. January 7, 2015. Archived from the original on January 11, 2015. Retrieved January 11, 2015.
157. Gates, Bill (January 5, 2015). "From poop to portable, This Ingenious Machine Turns Feces into Drinking Water". Gatesnotes.com. Archived from the original on January 13, 2015. Retrieved January 13, 2015.
158. "Bill Gates and Jimmy Drink Poop Water". Youtube Channel of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. January 22, 2015. Archived from the original on May 7, 2015.
159. "Bill Gates makes $100 million personal investment to fight Alzheimer's". Reuters. November 13, 2017. Archived from the original on November 13, 2017. Retrieved November 13, 2017.
160. "Briefly Noted < Excellence in Philanthropy". The Philanthropy Roundtable. Archived from the original on February 11, 2016. Retrieved March 10, 2016.
161. "Bill Gates follows Thalapathy Vijay's unique way to help Kerala flood victims – Tamil Movie News". IndiaGlitz.com. Archived from the original on August 26, 2018. Retrieved August 25, 2018.
162. Brueck, Hilary. "Bill Gates Is Giving Away Free Copies of One of the Most Important Books He's Read to All College Graduates – Here's How to Get Yours". Entrepreneur. Archived from the original on May 17, 2021. Retrieved July 21, 2022.
163. Gates Notes (October 25, 2021). "Every College and University Student Around the World Can Now Receive a Free Digital Copy of Bill Gates' Book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster". prnewswire. Archived from the original on July 21, 2022. Retrieved July 21, 2022.
164. Lui, Herbert (October 2, 2021). "Why Bill Gates gave away 4 million copies of this book to future leaders". Fast Company. Archived from the original on July 21, 2022. Retrieved July 21, 2022.
165. "Are Bill and Melinda Gates Giving Away Free College Textbooks?". Snopes. August 24, 2016. Archived from the original on October 13, 2022. Retrieved July 21, 2022.
166. Bekiempis, Victoria (July 15, 2022). "Bill Gates pledges to donate 'virtually all' of $113bn fortune to his foundation". The Guardian. Archived from the original on December 16, 2022. Retrieved March 13, 2023.
167. "Live blog: Bill Gates and Roger Federer play tennis for charity in Seattle". April 30, 2017. Archived from the original on May 1, 2017.
168. "Match For Africa 4 a Huge Hit for Federer's Foundation". Tennis.com. Archived from the original on May 4, 2017. Retrieved May 16, 2018.
169. "Roger Federer's Match For Africa Raises More Than $2.5 Million". Tennis.com. Archived from the original on March 8, 2018. Retrieved May 16, 2018.
170. Gates, Bill; Halvorson, Michael; Rygmyr, David (1989). Learn BASIC Now. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Press. pp. ix–x.
171. Gates, Bill (2021). How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need. Description Archived April 4, 2023, at the Wayback Machine & arrowed/scrollable preview. Knopf. Retrieved April 26, 2021.
172. Vaughan, Adam (May 2, 2022). "How to Prevent the Next Pandemic review: Bill Gates's timely blueprint". New Scientist. Archived from the original on May 2, 2022. Retrieved May 5, 2022.
173. Horton, Richard (May 14, 2022). "Offline: Bill Gates and the fate of WHO". The Lancet. 399 (10338): 1853. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(22)00874-1. ISSN 0140-6736. PMID 35569450. S2CID 248726392.
174. "Source Code". Penguin Books. Retrieved January 3, 2024.
175. Paterson, Thane (June 13, 2000). ""He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close he could hardly fail to grasp it" (Advice for Bill Gates: A Little Culture Wouldn't Hurt)". Business Week. Archived from the original on May 1, 2008. Retrieved April 28, 2008.
176. Gates, Bill (2022). "I was recently asked what advice I would give to young people who want to make a positive impact on the world". LinkedIn. LinkedIn. Archived from the original on June 19, 2022. Retrieved June 19, 2022. My advice is simple: Read a lot and discover a skill you enjoy
177. "Bill Gates: Chairman". Microsoft Corporation. 2008. Archived from the original on August 28, 2008. Alt URL Archived September 21, 2022, at the Wayback Machine
178. "Profile: Bill Gates". BBC News. January 26, 2004. Archived from the original on February 1, 2009. Retrieved January 1, 2010.
179. Riddell, Mary (October 21, 2016). "Bill Gates: He eats Big Macs for lunch and schedules every minute of his day – meet the man worth $80 billion". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on October 24, 2016. Retrieved October 24, 2016.
180. ^ Zuckerman, Laurence (October 27, 1997). "New Jet Eases Travel Hassles For Bill Gates". The New York Times. Archived from the original on September 5, 2012. Retrieved May 20, 2021.
181. Lesinski 2006, p. 74
182. Vogel, Carol (May 5, 1998). "Sale of Homer Seascape Sets Record". The New York Times. Archived from the original on September 21, 2022. Retrieved April 26, 2021.
183. Osborn, Alex (February 18, 2016). "This Was Bill Gates' Favorite XBLA Game". IGN. Ziff Davis. Archived from the original on February 19, 2016.
184. ^ "Bill Gates says he has COVID, experiencing mild symptoms". CP24. Associated Press. May 10, 2022. Archived from the original on May 11, 2022. Retrieved May 11, 2022.
185. Fleury, Michelle (May 3, 2021). "Bill and Melinda Gates divorce after 27 years of marriage". BBC News. Retrieved September 2, 2024.
186. Dodd, Sophie (June 26, 2024). "Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates' Relationship Timeline". People. Retrieved September 2, 2024.
187. Liao, Christina (July 31, 2017). "You Can Now Have Your Wedding Where Bill Gates Got Married". Forbes. Retrieved September 2, 2024.
188. Gammon, Katherine (May 19, 2008). "What We'll Miss About Bill Gates — a Very Long Good-Bye". Wired. Archived from the original on April 13, 2021. Retrieved May 4, 2021.
189. Scipioni, Jade (June 26, 2020). "Bill Gates' daughter Jenn: 'I was born into a huge situation of privilege'". CNBC. Archived from the original on April 23, 2021. Retrieved May 3, 2021.
190. Dodd, Sophie. "Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates' 3 Children: All About Jennifer, Rory and Phoebe". Peoplemag. Retrieved September 2, 2024.
191. Anderson, Rick (May 16, 2008). "Taxman Cometh". Seattle Weekly. Archived from the original on April 17, 2013.
192. "Photo Gallery: Homes Of The Billionaires". Forbes. May 22, 2002. Archived from the original on March 26, 2010. Retrieved June 9, 2010.
193. Novet, Jordan (May 3, 2021). "Bill Gates and Melinda Gates are splitting up after 27 years". CNBC. Archived from the original on May 3, 2021. Retrieved May 3, 2021.
194. Kulish, Nicholas; Gelles, David; Das, Anupreeta; Kelly, Kate (May 13, 2021). "The Gateses' Public Split Spotlights a Secretive Fortune". The New York Times. Archived from the original on May 13, 2021.
195. Glazer, Emily; Safdar, Khadeeja (May 9, 2021). "Melinda Gates Was Meeting With Divorce Lawyers Since 2019 to End Marriage With Bill Gates". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on May 11, 2021. Retrieved May 12, 2021.
196. DeSantis, Rachel; Triggs, Charlotte (May 7, 2021). "'Combo of Things' Led to Bill & Melinda Gates' Divorce, But 'Nobody' Wants 'More Scrutiny': Source". People. Retrieved September 2, 2024.
197. Kulish, Nicholas (August 2, 2021). "Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates finalize their divorce". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved September 2, 2024.
198. Chung, Gabrielle (February 10, 2023). "Paula Hurd, Widow of Late Oracle CEO Is Dating Bill Gates". NBC New York. Retrieved July 28, 2024.
199. Calvario, Liz (March 7, 2023). "Bill Gates becomes a first-time grandfather after daughter Jennifer welcomes baby". TODAY.com. Retrieved July 29, 2024.
200. Sacks, Hannah; Clack, Erin (November 2, 2024). "Jennifer Gates Welcomes Baby No. 2, a Girl, with Husband Nayel Nassar: 'The Best Gift'". People.com. Retrieved December 17, 2024.
201. ^ Carr, Austin (May 21, 2021). "Bill Gates's Carefully Curated Geek Image Unravels in Two Weeks". Bloomberg News. Archived from the original on July 23, 2021. Retrieved July 25, 2021.
202. ^ Flitter, Emily; Goldstein, Matthew (May 16, 2021). "Long Before Divorce, Bill Gates Had Reputation for Questionable Behavior". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on December 28, 2021. Retrieved May 22, 2021.
203. Shephard, Alex (June 4, 2021). "Oligarch of the Month: Bill Gates". The New Republic. ISSN 0028-6583. Archived from the original on July 23, 2021. Retrieved July 23, 2021.
204. "Billionaire Bill Gates Uses Money to Shape the Media". Jacobin. November 2021. Archived from the original on November 27, 2021. Retrieved May 19, 2022.
205. "How Bill Gates and partners used their clout to control the global Covid response — with little oversight". Politico. September 14, 2022. Archived from the original on October 17, 2022. Retrieved October 16, 2022.
206. Wakefield, Jane (June 6, 2020), "How Bill Gates became the voodoo doll of Covid conspiracies", BBC, archived from the original on November 7, 2022, retrieved November 7, 2022
207. Wakabayashi, Daisuke; Alba, Davey; Tracy, Marc (April 17, 2020), "Bill Gates, at Odds With Trump on Virus, Becomes a Right-Wing Target", The New York Times, archived from the original on December 9, 2020, retrieved November 7, 2022
208. Gates, Bill (July 24, 2020), Bill Gates' message to Covid-19 conspiracy theorists, interviewed by Anderson Cooper, CNN, archived from the original on October 17, 2022, retrieved November 7, 2022
209. Sandler, Rachel. "Bill Gates Explains Why He Doesn't Own Any Cryptocurrency". Forbes. Archived from the original on November 12, 2022. Retrieved November 12, 2022.
210. ^ Goodell, Jeff (March 27, 2014). "Bill Gates: The Rolling Stone Interview". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on May 9, 2014. Retrieved April 14, 2014.
211. Wahba, Phil (September 17, 2008). "Bill Gates tops US wealth list 15 years continuously". Reuters. Archived from the original on December 18, 2008. Retrieved November 6, 2008.
212. Kirsch, Noah. "Here's Why Jeff Bezos Is Not Truly The Richest Person In History". Forbes. Archived from the original on January 11, 2018. Retrieved January 11, 2018.
213. "Bloomberg Billionaires Index: Bill Gates". Bloomberg. Archived from the original on May 3, 2022. Retrieved June 5, 2024.
214. Fridson 2001, p. 113
215. Bolger, Joe (May 5, 2006). "I wish I was not the richest man in the world, says Bill Gates". The Times. Archived from the original on September 23, 2008. Retrieved March 31, 2008.
216. Cuadros, Alex; Harrison, Crayton (May 17, 2013). "Bill Gates Retakes World's Richest Title From Carlos Slim". Forbes. Archived from the original on September 24, 2010. Retrieved May 30, 2013.
217. "Bill Gates regains world's richest man title: Forbes". The Economic Times. March 3, 2014. Archived from the original on September 14, 2016.
218. "Forbes Billionaires list". Archived from the original on December 3, 2011.
219. Estevez, Dolia (June 7, 2014). "Mexico's Carlos Slim Reclaims World's Richest Man Title From Bill Gates". Forbes. Archived from the original on September 1, 2014. Retrieved September 1, 2014.
220. "The World's Billionaires". Forbes. Archived from the original on November 29, 2014. Retrieved November 30, 2014.
221. "Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Is The Richest Person In The World-Again". Forbes. Archived from the original on March 11, 2018.
222. "Bill Gates". Forbes. October 2023. Archived from the original on October 7, 2023. Retrieved October 6, 2023.
223. Feuerherd, Ben (November 16, 2019). "Bill Gates regains spot as world's richest person over Jeff Bezos". New York Post. Archived from the original on November 16, 2019. Retrieved November 19, 2019.
224. "Newsnight Interview". BBC News. January 24, 2014. Archived from the original on August 23, 2017. Retrieved August 23, 2017.
225. "US Should Pay More Tax". ABC. May 28, 2013. Archived from the original on July 7, 2017. Retrieved August 23, 2017.
226. "Microsoft 2006 Proxy Statement". Microsoft. October 6, 2007. Archived from the original on February 19, 2008. Retrieved February 14, 2008.
227. Fried, Ina (December 14, 2004). "Gates joins board of Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway". CNET. Archived from the original on September 8, 2012. Retrieved March 31, 2008.
228. Wasserman, Elizabeth (November 17, 1998). "Gates deposition makes judge laugh in court". CNN. Archived from the original on April 7, 2013. Retrieved April 10, 2013.
229. "Microsoft's Teflon Bill". BusinessWeek. November 30, 1998. Archived from the original on April 7, 2008. Retrieved March 30, 2008.
230. ^ Heilemann, John (November 1, 2000). "The Truth, The Whole Truth, and Nothing But The Truth". Wired. Vol. 8, no. 11. Archived from the original on May 28, 2014. Retrieved March 31, 2008.
231. Freiberger, Paul (August 31, 1981). "Bugs in Radio Shack TRS-80 Model III: How Bad Are They?". InfoWorld. p. 49. Archived from the original on September 2, 2016. Retrieved February 28, 2011.
232. Thorlin, Fred (April 2000). "Fred Thorlin: The Big Boss at Atari Program Exchange" (Interview). Interviewed by Kevin Savetz. Atari archives. Archived from the original on January 1, 2013. Retrieved December 6, 2012.
233. ^ Allen, Frederick (March 30, 2011). "Bill Gates Tried to Screw Paul Allen? What's the Surprise?". Forbes. Archived from the original on May 22, 2021. Retrieved May 22, 2021.
234. ^ Carr, Austin (May 21, 2021). "Bill Gates's Carefully Curated Geek Image Unravels in Two Weeks". Bloomberg. Archived from the original on May 22, 2021. Retrieved May 22, 2021.
235. ^ Kelly, Heather (October 17, 2018). "Paul Allen's battle with Bill Gates defined his legacy". CNN. Archived from the original on May 22, 2021. Retrieved May 22, 2021.
236. ^ "Epstein meetings a huge mistake, says Bill Gates" Archived March 30, 2022, at the Wayback Machine. BBC.
237. Rensin, David (1994). "The Bill Gates Interview". Playboy.
238. Ballmer, Steve (October 9, 1997). "Steve Ballmer Speech Transcript – Church Hill Club". Microsoft. Archived from the original on April 20, 2008. Retrieved March 31, 2008.
239. Wallace, James; Erickson, Jim (1992). "Growing Pains". Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire. John Wiley & Sons. p. 277-278. ISBN 0-471-56886-4.
240. ^ Isaacson, Walter (January 13, 1997). "The Gates Operating System". Time. Archived from the original on June 19, 2000. Retrieved March 31, 2008.
241. Bank, David (February 1, 1999). "Breaking Windows". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on April 16, 2016. Retrieved March 31, 2008.
242. Smith, Matthew S. (February 26, 2023). "Flight Simulator Gave Birth to 3D Video-Game Graphics". IEEE Spectrum. Archived from the original on February 27, 2023. Retrieved February 28, 2023.
243. Chapman, Glenn (June 27, 2008). "Bill Gates Signs Off". Agence France-Presse. Archived from the original on June 30, 2008.
244. Herbold, Robert (2004). The Fiefdom Syndrome: The Turf Battles That Undermine Careers and Companies – And How to Overcome Them. Currency Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-51067-5.
245. ^ Flitter, Emily; Stewart, James B. (October 12, 2019). "Bill Gates Met With Jeffrey Epstein Many Times, Despite His Past". The New York Times. Archived from the original on January 1, 2022.
246. ^ Martin Pengelly & Rupert Neate (May 10, 2021), "Melinda Gates began divorce moves at time Bill's meetings with Jeffrey Epstein revealed" Archived May 11, 2021, at the Wayback Machine, The Guardian: "Her meeting with divorce lawyers in October 2019 is said to have taken place at roughly the same time as a New York Times article detailed Bill's meetings with Epstein, which included an overnight stay at Epstein's New York mansion."
247. Norton, Tom (February 20, 2023). "Fact Check: Did Bill Gates visit Epstein island 37 times?". Newsweek. Archived from the original on November 14, 2023. Retrieved November 14, 2023.
248. Tore Gjerstad & Gard Oterholm (October 2, 2020), "Bill Gates and Jeffrey Epstein met with Nobel Committee chair" Archived September 23, 2022, at the Wayback Machine, Dagens Næringsliv Magasinet: "Not only did Jagland meet Epstein, he hosted him at his lavish residence in Strasbourg, France. At the time, Jagland was the sitting chair of the committee, which awards the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize. Also present: a philanthropist touted as a possible Prize recipient."
249. (October 2013), "International Peace Institute, Inc." Archived September 23, 2022, at the Wayback Machine, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
250. Safdar, Khadeeja; Glazer, Emily (May 21, 2023). "Jeffrey Epstein Appeared to Threaten Bill Gates Over Microsoft Co-Founder's Affair With Russian Bridge Player". The Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Archived from the original on May 22, 2023. Retrieved May 22, 2023.
251. Grossman, Lev (April 18, 2005). "The 2005 Time 100". Time. ISSN 0040-781X. Archived from the original on October 20, 2021. Retrieved November 2, 2021.
252. Lesinski 2006, p. 102
253. Cowley, Jason (June 22, 2006). "Heroes of our time – the top 50". New Statesman. Archived from the original on December 31, 2007. Retrieved February 17, 2008.
254. "Gates 'second only to Blair'". BBC News. September 26, 1999. Archived from the original on December 29, 2008. Retrieved March 30, 2008.
255. "Gates krijgt eredoctoraat Nijenrode" (in Dutch). Computable. November 4, 1996. Archived from the original on December 31, 2021. Retrieved January 1, 2022.
256. "Honorary doctors at KTH". About KTH. Stockholm: KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Archived from the original on April 17, 2015. Retrieved January 19, 2015.
257. History of the University Archived October 7, 2020, at the Wayback Machine – website of the Waseda University
258. "Bill Gates Awarded Honorary Doctorate of Tsinghua". Tsinghua University. April 19, 2007. Archived from the original on July 7, 2011. Retrieved June 9, 2010.
259. Hughes, Gina (June 8, 2007). "Bill Gates Gets Degree After 30 Years". Yahoo!. Archived from the original on December 27, 2007. Retrieved February 18, 2008.
260. "Karolinska Institutet Medicine hedersdoktorer 1910-2013" [Honorary doctors of medicine at the Karolinska Institute 1910–2013] (PDF) (in Swedish). Karolinska Institutet. May 22, 2013. Archived (PDF) from the original on May 1, 2015. Retrieved January 19, 2015.
261. Anon (2009). "The Chancellor in Cambridge to confer Honorary Degrees". cam.ac.uk. University of Cambridge. Archived from the original on August 17, 2009. Retrieved August 20, 2009.
262. Anon (2023). "NAU to recognize four exceptional leaders with an honorary doctorate during spring commencement ceremonies". nau.edu. Northern Arizona University. Archived from the original on June 9, 2023. Retrieved May 1, 2023.
263. Gates, Bill (2023). "5 things I wish I heard at the graduation I never had: The advice I shared with the class of 2023 is advice I could have used myself". gatesnotes.com. Archived from the original on August 4, 2023. Retrieved May 16, 2023. "The five things I wish I was told at the graduation I never attended: The first thing is, your life isn't a one-act play..."
264. Blakely, Rhys (July 18, 2007). "Gates how piracy worked for me in China". The Times. Archived from the original on June 11, 2011. Retrieved April 26, 2010.
265. "Bill Gates Speaks of Opportunities and Challenges Facing "Generation I"". News Center. October 28, 1999. Archived from the original on December 31, 2015. Retrieved October 25, 2015.
266. "Mr. William H. Gates, III". National Academy of Engineering. Archived from the original on October 7, 2020. Retrieved June 12, 2019.
267. Thompson, F. Christian (August 19, 1999). "Bill Gates' Flower Fly Eristalis gatesi Thompson". The Diptera Site. Archived from the original on February 12, 2008. Retrieved February 18, 2008.
268. American Library Association. Honorary Membership Archived September 23, 2022, at the Wayback Machine.
269. National Winners|public service awards Archived November 24, 2010, at the Wayback Machine. Jefferson Awards.org. Retrieved on September 4, 2013.
270. "Knighthood for Microsoft's Gates". BBC News. March 2, 2005. Archived from the original on March 9, 2008. Retrieved February 18, 2008.
271. "The 2006 James C. Morgan Global Humanitarian Award". The Tech Museum of Innovation. Archived from the original on April 2, 2014. Retrieved April 2, 2014.
272. "Proclamation of the Award". Diario Oficial de la Federación. Archived from the original on March 6, 2008. Retrieved March 30, 2008.
273. "Bower Award for Business Leadership". The Franklin Institute. 2010. Archived from the original on July 26, 2010. Retrieved June 30, 2013.
274. "Bill Gates receives Silver Buffalo Boy Scout award". BBC. September 15, 2010. Archived from the original on February 19, 2023. Retrieved June 25, 2023.
275. "The World's Most Powerful People". Forbes. December 5, 2012. Archived from the original on December 30, 2012. Retrieved June 30, 2013.
276. "The World's Most Powerful People". Forbes. November 2, 2011. Archived from the original on November 3, 2011. Retrieved June 30, 2013.
277. "Padma Awards – Press Information Board of India". Ministry of Home Affairs, India. Archived from the original on January 28, 2015.
278. "Padma awards 2015 announced: Advani, Amitabh among 104 awardees". Zee News. January 25, 2015. Archived from the original on January 28, 2015. Retrieved January 25, 2015.
279. "President Obama Names Recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom". whitehouse.gov. November 16, 2016. Archived from the original on January 21, 2017. Retrieved November 16, 2016 – via National Archives.
280. Ambassade de France aux Etats-Unis – Washington, D.C. (April 21, 2017). "Bill et Melinda Gates décorés de la Légion d'Honneur" [Bill and Melinda Gates awarded the Legion of Honor] (in French). France in the United States / Embassy of France in Washington, D.C. Archived from the original on March 15, 2018. Retrieved March 15, 2018.
281. Xiang, Bo (November 27, 2017). "Bill Gates elected to Chinese Academy of Engineering". Xinhua. Archived from the original on December 17, 2017. Retrieved June 10, 2019.
282. "2019 Hawking Fellowship". Time Magazine. October 7, 2019. Archived from the original on May 7, 2024. Retrieved August 15, 2023.
283. Mr. Bill Gates to receive 2020 Spring Decoration from the Government of Japan. Consulate-General of Japan in Seattle
284. "Youtube Streamy Awards, Crossover". Archived from the original on December 13, 2021. Retrieved December 15, 2021.
285. "Machine That Changed The World, The; Interview with Bill Gates, 1990 (raw video)". WGBH Open Vault. 1990. Archived from the original on October 14, 2016. Retrieved September 19, 2016.
286. "Bill Gates Goes to Sundance, Offers an Education". ABC News. January 23, 2010. Archived from the original on January 28, 2010.
287. Cohen, Lindsay. "'Bogus Bill' has a blast playing billionaire in 'The Social Network'". KVAL 13. Archived from the original on July 30, 2015. Retrieved October 25, 2015.
288. "American Genius". Archived from the original on September 10, 2015. Retrieved September 10, 2015.
289. Moss, Caroline (November 24, 2013). "In 1983, Steve Jobs Hosted Apple's Version Of 'The Dating Game' And Bill Gates Was A Contestant". Business Insider. Archived from the original on October 22, 2021. Retrieved November 21, 2021.
290. "College of Chemistry Timeline". UC Berkeley. Archived from the original on May 19, 2018. Retrieved July 21, 2022.
291. Bernt Wahl (1991). Bill Gates at BMUG meeting 1991 (c) Bernt Wahl. PSL Hall, University of California, Berkeley: YouTube. Archived from the original on July 21, 2022. Retrieved July 21, 2022.
292. Bernt Wahl (1991). Bill Gates at BMUG. PSL Hall, University of California, Berkeley: YouTube. Archived from the original on July 21, 2022. Retrieved July 21, 2022.
293. Bernt Wahl (1991). Bill Gates at Berkeley Macintosh Users Group. PSL Hall, University of California, Berkeley: YouTube. Archived from the original on July 21, 2022. Retrieved July 21, 2022.
294. "Bill Gates' TED talks". TED.com. Archived from the original on March 16, 2014. Retrieved July 2, 2020.
295. "BBC Radio 4 – Desert Island Discs, Bill Gates". BBC. Archived from the original on March 20, 2016. Retrieved March 29, 2016.
296. "Gates in 'Frasier' guest spot". ZDNET. Archived from the original on January 26, 2024. Retrieved January 26, 2024.
297. Lerman, Rachel (March 27, 2018). "Bill Gates to guest star on geeky 'The Big Bang Theory'". The Seattle Times. Archived from the original on February 26, 2019. Retrieved February 25, 2019.
298. "'Big fan' Bill Gates makes appearance in 'Silicon Valley' series finale as HBO comedy logs off". December 9, 2019. Archived from the original on December 9, 2019. Retrieved May 8, 2020.
299. "Amol Rajan Interviews: Bill Gates". BBC. Archived from the original on February 20, 2023. Retrieved February 20, 2023.
300. "The Billionaires Who Made Our World: Bill Gates". Channel 4. Archived from the original on February 20, 2023. Retrieved February 20, 2023.

Bibliography

• Fridson, Martin (2001). How to Be a Billionaire: Proven Strategies from the Titans of Wealth. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0-471-41617-7.
• Gates, Bill (1996). The Road Ahead. Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-026040-4.
• Lesinski, Jeanne M. (2006). Bill Gates (biography). A&E Television Networks. ISBN 0-8225-7027-0.
• Manes, Stephen (1994). Gates: How Microsoft's Mogul Reinvented an Industry and Made Himself the Richest Man in America. Touchstone Pictures. ISBN 0-671-88074-8.
• Wallace, James (1993). Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 0-471-56886-4.

Primary sources

• Gates, Bill. "Bill Gates explains how AI will change our lives in 5 years". CNN (2024). online
• Gates, Bill. "An exclusive interview with Bill Gates". Financial Times 1 (2013). online
• Gates, Bill. "Remarks of Bill Gates, Harvard Commencement 2007". The Harvard Gazette 7 (2007). Online
• Kinsley, Michael, and Conor Clarke, Eds. Creative Capitalism: A Conversation With Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Other Economic Leaders (Simon and Schuster, 2009).
• National Museum of American History. Online

Further reading

• Bank, David (2001). Breaking Windows: How Bill Gates Fumbled the Future of Microsoft. New York: Free Press. ISBN 0-7432-0315-1. OCLC 46634139.
• "The Meaning of Bill Gates: As His Reign at Microsoft Comes to an End, so Does the Era He Dominated". The Economist. June 28, 2008. Archived from the original on October 29, 2010.
• Kildall, Gary (October 25, 2004). "The Man Who Could Have Been Bill Gates". Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Archived from the original on April 4, 2006. Retrieved June 9, 2010.
• Leibovich, Mark (2002). The New Imperialists. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall. pp. . ISBN 9780735203174. OCLC 47990010.
• Rivlin, Gary (1999). The Plot to Get Bill Gates: An Irreverent Investigation of the World's Richest Man... and the People Who Hate Him. New York: Times Business. ISBN 0-8129-3006-1.
• Wallace, James (1997). Overdrive: Bill Gates and the Race to Control Cyberspace. New York: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 9780471180418. OCLC 36201264.
• "83 Reasons Why Bill Gates's Reign Is Over". Wired. Vol. 6, no. 12. December 1998. Archived from the original on August 22, 2010.

External links

• Official website
• Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Bill Gates at IMDb
• Bill Gates at TED
• Forbes profile

v t e Bill Gates
Career	Microsoft history Paul Allen Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (CEPI) Corbis (BEN) Cascade Investment United States v. Microsoft antitrust case TerraPower Gates Ventures Big History Project Breakthrough Energy
Writings	"Open Letter to Hobbyists" (1976) The Road Ahead (1995) Business @ the Speed of Thought (1999) How to Avoid a Climate Disaster (2021) How to Prevent the Next Pandemic (2022) Source Code (2025)
Philanthropy	Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Match for Africa climate change donations and sporting events
Films	Triumph of the Nerds (1996) Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999) The Social Network (2010) Inside Bill's Brain: Decoding Bill Gates (2019)
Family	Melinda French Gates (ex-wife) Bill Gates Sr. (father) Mary Maxwell Gates (mother) Mimi Gardner Gates (stepmother)
Possessions	Codex Leicester Residence Lost on the Grand Banks Porsche 959
Category Commons