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　　Bill Gate

　　Bill Gate is an American business magnate, philanthropist, author and chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen. He is consistently ranked among the worlds wealthiest people and was the wealthiest overall from 1995 to 2009, excluding 2008, when he was ranked third. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of CEO and chief software architect, and remains the largest individual shareholder with more than 8 percent of the common stock. He has also authored or co-authored several books.

　　Time magazine named Gates one of the 100 people who most influenced the 20th century, as well as one of the 100 most influential people of 2004, 2005, and 2006. Time also collectively named Gates, his wife Melinda and U2s lead singer Bono as the 2005 Persons of the Year for their humanitarian efforts.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gate - cite_note-68 In 2006, he was voted eighth in the list of Heroes of our time.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 included in The Guardian as one of the Top 100 influential people in media in 2001

　　Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. Although he is admired by many, a number of industry insiders criticize his business tactics, which they consider anti-competitive, an opinion which has in some cases been upheld by the courts . In the later stages of his career, Gates has pursued a number of philanthropic endeavors, donating large amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill Melinda Gates Foundation, established in 2000.

　　Bill Gates stepped down as chief executive officer of Microsoft in January 2000. He remained as chairman and created the position of chief software architect. In June 2006, Gates announced that he would be transitioning from full-time work at Microsoft to part-time work and full-time work at the Bill Melinda Gates Foundation. He gradually transferred his duties to Ray Ozzie, chief software architect and Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer. Gates last full-time day at Microsoft was June 27, 2008. He remains at Microsoft as non-executive chairman.

　　In 1987 Gates was officially declared a billionaire in the pages of Forbes 400 Richest People in America issue, just days before his 32nd birthday. As the worlds youngest self-made billionaire, he was worth $1.25 billion, over $900 million more than hed been worth the year before, when hed debuted on the list.

　　Gates graduated from Lakeside School in 1973. He scored 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT and enrolled at Harvard College in the autumn of 1973. While at Harvard, he met Steve Ballmer, who later succeeded Gates as CEO of Microsoft, and computer scientist Christos Papadimitriou, with whom he wrote a paper about pancake sorting. He did not have a definite study plan while a student at Harvard and spent a lot of time using the schools computers. He remained in contact with Paul Allen, joining him at Honeywell during the summer of 1974. The following year saw the release of the MITS Altair 8800 based on the Intel 8080 CPU, and Gates and Allen saw this as the opportunity to start their own computer software company. He had talked this decision over with his parents, who were supportive of him after seeing how much Gates wanted to start a company.

　　Philanthropy

　　Gates began to realize the expectations others had of him when public opinion mounted that he could give more of his wealth to charity. Gates studied the work of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller and in 1994 sold some of his Microsoft stock to create the William H. Gates Foundation. In 2000, Gates and his wife combined three family foundations into one to create the charitable Bill Melinda Gates Foundation, which is the largest transparently operated charitable foundation in the world. The foundation is set up to allow benefactors access to how its money is being spent, unlike other major charitable organizations such as the Wellcome Trust. The generosity and extensive philanthropy of David Rockefeller has been credited as a major influence. Gates and his father have met with Rockefeller several times and have modeled their giving in part on the Rockefeller familys philanthropic focus, namely those global problems that are ignored by governments and other organizations. As of 2007, Bill and Melinda Gates were the second most generous philanthropists in America, having given over $28 billion to charity.

　　The foundation has also received criticism because it invests the assets that it has not yet distributed with the exclusive goal of maximizing the return on investment. As a result, its investments include companies that have been criticized for worsening poverty in the same developing countries where the Foundation is attempting to relieve poverty. These include companies that pollute heavily and pharmaceutical companies that do not sell into the developing world. In response to press criticism, the foundation announced in 2007 a review of its investments to assess social responsibility. It subsequently cancelled the review and stood by its policy of investing for maximum return, while using voting rights to influence company practices. Gates has made The Giving Pledge to donate over half of his wealth to charity.