William Henry "Bill" Gates born October 28, 1955
is an American business magnate, philanthropist, investor, computer programmer,
and inventor. Gates is the former chief executive and chairman of Microsoft,
the world’s largest personal-computer software company, which he co-founded
with Paul Allen.
He is consistently ranked in the Forbes list of the world's
wealthiest people and was the wealthiest overall from 1995 to 2009—excluding
2008, when he was ranked third; in 2011 he was the wealthiest American and the
world's second wealthiest person