Bill Gates was born on October 28^th 1955 in Seattle, Washington to William H. Gates Jr. (now Sr.) and Mary Maxwell Gates. The only boy in the family born between his two sisters,  Kristianne and Libby. Gates was born into a wealthy family. His father was a lawyer and his mother was on the board of directors of the First Interstate bank. 

His early school years were spent at the Lakeside School in Seattle, a very expensive and prestigious elementary school, where he was seen as an exemplary student excelling in mathematics and science.

It was while at Lakeside that he developed his enthusiasm for programming computers in Basic. In the autumn of 1973 Gates enrolled at Harvard University where he intended to study law. While at Harvard Gates met up with his future business partner, Steve Ballmer. Together they developed techniques for getting computer companies to take note of their work. Once they were acknowledge by Micro Instrumental and Telemetry Systems Gates left Harvard in 1975 to work at MITS and named their partnership, ‘Micro-Soft’. Within a year, the hyphen was dropped, and in November 1976, the trade name "Microsoft" was registered. 

During the early days of Microsoft, according to Gates, every worked had to cover any job that came in. From receiving a phone call for an order, to packing and mailing it. In the early 1980’s Microsoft developed and released its version of graphical user interface and named it ‘Windows.” Then in 1990 Gates released Windows version 3.0 which sold over 10 million copies in the first two years and gave Gates’ company dominance in the operating system sales. 

On January 1^st 1994 Bill married Melinda French with whom he has three children. The family home, which is situated on the side of a hill overlooking Lake Washington, is thought to be one of the most expensive houses in the world, valued at 2006 prices as $125 million. Gates’ wealth has been tracked by Forbes and from 1995 until 2006 he has remained number one on the list every year with a 57 billion dollar fortune. 

On January 1^st 2000, to open the new millennium Gates was interviewed on the Larry King Live show, where he gave an in depth account of his school years and how he and his partner built their computer business. 

One of Gates’ close friends is another man listed on Forbes rich list, Warren Buffett. Gates is a director of Buffet’s investment company Berkshire Hathaway. Gates credited Warren Buffet with influencing his decision to commit himself to charitable causes. 

In 2005 Gates was given an honorary Knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.Gates has stated that he wishes he was not as rich as he is as it brings such unwanted attention to him and his family but that still doesn’t prevent him being one of the best know entrepreneurs around the world along with the likes of Richard Branson, and being seen as the biggest thing in India since The Beatles.