Bill Gates

William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is the co-founder, chairman and chief software architect of Microsoft Corporation, the world's largest software company (as of June 2006). He is also the founder of Corbis, a digital image archiving company. The Forbes international rich list has ranked him as the world's richest person for the last twelve straight years. In 1999, Gates' wealth briefly surpassed $100 billion, making him the world's first centibillionaire. When family wealth is considered, his family ranks second behind the Walton family.

Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. He is widely respected for his intelligence, foresight, and ambition. He is also widely criticized as having built Microsoft's business through unfair, illegal, or anticompetitive business practices. Government authorities in several countries have found some of Microsoft's practices illegal, as in United States v. Microsoft.

Since amassing his fortune, Gates has pursued a number of philanthropic endeavors, donating large amounts of money (about 52% of his total fortune) to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, founded in 2000. He, his wife Melinda and U2's lead singer Bono were collectively named by Time as the 2005 Persons of the Year. That same year he was given an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II. In 2006, Gates Foundation was awarded the Premio Príncipe de Asturias en Cooperación Internacional.

In a list compiled by the magazine New Statesman in 2006, he was voted eighth in the list of "Heroes of our time"