Bill Gates

William Henry Gates III was born in 1955 in Seattle, Washington. As a teenager, he attended Lakeside School, where he discovered his passion for computer programming. He spent countless hours in the school's computer room, writing code and learning how machines worked. Along with his childhood friend Paul Allen, Gates realized early on that software would be the key to the future of computing. He briefly attended Harvard University but dropped out to pursue his entrepreneurial dreams full-time.

In 1975, Gates and Allen co-founded Microsoft with a bold vision: "a computer on every desk and in every home." At the time, computers were massive, expensive machines used only by large businesses and governments. Microsoft's big break came when they licensed an operating system, MS-DOS, to IBM for their new personal computers. Instead of selling the software outright, Gates smartly kept the rights to license it to other companies, which made Microsoft the dominant force in the booming PC market.

Microsoft continued to innovate by developing Windows, a graphical operating system that allowed users to click on pictures using a mouse instead of typing text commands. This made computers incredibly easy for everyday people to use. After building one of the most successful companies in history and becoming one of the wealthiest people in the world, Gates eventually shifted his focus. Today, he is a leading philanthropist, using his wealth to solve global problems like disease and poverty through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.