Co-founder of Microsoft along with his schoolfriend Paul Allen.

Gates was a gifted but immodest student, allegedly predicting while at school that he would be a billionaire by the age of 25. He attended Harvard, where, with Paul Allen, he developed a version of the programming language BASIC for the Altair, an early PC. Within a year of this early success Gates dropped out of Harvard to found software company Microsoft, which has since grown to dominate the world of PC software.

There is some doubt about the propriety of Microsoft's acquisition of MS-DOS, the operating system that Microsoft sold to IBM. Incidents like this have gained Gates a reputation for unscrupulousness. At one time Apple was considering suing Microsoft for plagiarising the Macintosh 'look and feel'. In 2000 Microsoft was judged guilty of abusing its monopoly on the software market, for example in its aggressive promotion of Microsoft Internet Explorer, the company's web browser.

While Gates is an aggressive businessman he is also a generous philanthropist. He has produced several books on the computer industry and is a model for numerous entrepreneurs. He was married in 1994 and has three children.