United Life 02 | Page 36

Ľudia, ktorí zmenili svet People who changed the world William Henry Gates III alias Bill Gates Exclusive base for personality development Bill Gates, full name William Henry Gates III, was born to family of company attorney and teacher and member of the board of directors for First Interstate Bank. Apart from that his mother, Mary Maxwell Gates, served on the position of member of national board for international non-profit organization United Way. So Bill got an extraordinary good family, financial and moral background thanks to he became a student of the prestige private high school in Lakeside in his early age and later also of the well-known Harvard College. Even during the study at high school his interest in electronic devices showed itself. In 1970’s the computers were only at the beginning of their way which not even today sees its end. Young Bill gained already at that time the job in one of the local computer companies which enabled him the access to mini-computer PDP10. Work with it became so interesting and valuable for Bill and soon, in his 17 years, he was able to put together the full program for school schedule creation. For this program he got a grant of 4200 USD which in that time meant a meaningful amount of money. In 1973 he enrolled at Harvard College where he met Steve Ballmer, the later CEO of Microsoft. He also brought another acquaintance from high school, Paul Allen, with who he created the interpreter of programming language Altair BASIC for the first commercial successful computer Altair 8800. Already here we can find the basis of the current Microsoft Corporation. Gates is filling this need in an uncommon extent. With his wife he leads Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation which size afflicts more than 20 different humanitarian aims. Among them are battle against diseases in countries of the third world including HIV, pneumonia, malaria and tuberculosis, help to people without home, development of new drugs, control of tobacco industry and financial help to poor people. The foundation was established symbolic on 1st January 2000 to indicate that close before the end of the 20th century very wealthy people should also share their wealth with those who had not an easy life. The turn of 20th and 21st century became the most significant for Gates in his life, because his big business was taken over by other gifted people and he started to fully devote to altruism. However, he has kept an analytical thinking and the effort to look to the future from now on, therefore his foundation solves not only the consequences but also the reasons of human misery. Almost without competitor is the effort of foundation to improve the lifes of people in countries of the third world through educat [ۈ[