Gates, William Henry, III

Gates, William Henry, III (1955- ), American business executive, chairman and chief executive officer of the Microsoft Corporation, born in Seattle, Washington. Gates co-founded Microsoft in 1975 with Paul Allen, his partner in computer language development from 1967. While attending Harvard in 1975, Gates teamed up with Allen to develop a version of the BASIC computer programming language for the MITS Altair, the first personal computer. This work on BASIC for the Altair led Gates to drop out of Harvard in 1977 to pursue full-time his vision of "a computer on every desk and in every home". In the early 1980s, Gates led Microsoft's evolution from a developer of computer programming languages to a diversified computer software company. This transition began with the introduction of MS-DOS, the operating system for the new IBM Personal Computer in 1981. Gates also pushed Microsoft towards the introduction of application software such as the Microsoft Word word processor.

Much of Gates's success rests on his ability to translate technical visions into market strategy, and to blend creativity with technical acumen (in 1995 he published The Road Ahead, his vision of the future shape of the computer revolution). He is one of the few founding chief executive officer's from the technical side of the PC industry to have survived and thrived on the business side as well. Although Gates has accumulated great wealth from his holdings of Microsoft stock, he has been known as a tough competitor who seems to value winning in a competitive environment over money. Gates continues to stay personally involved in product development at Microsoft.