William (Bill) H. Gates is chairman and CEO of Microsoft Corporation, which he founded in 1975 with Paul Allen. Microsoft had revenues of $8.6 billion for the fiscal year ending June 1996, and employs more than 20,000 people in 48 countries.

Born in 1955, Gates began his career in PC software, programming computers at age 13. In 1973, Gates entered Harvard University as a freshman, where be lived down the hall from Steve Ballmer, now Microsoft's executive vice president for sales and support. While at Harvard, Gates developed the programming language BASIC for the first microcomputer - the MITS Altair.

Gates' foresight and vision regarding personal computing have been central to the success of Microsoft and the software industry. Under Gates' leadership, Microsoft's mission is to continually advance and improve software technology and to make it easier, more cost-effective and more enjoyable for people to use computers. In 1995, Gates wrote The Road Ahead, his vision of where information technology will take society. The book is co-authored by Nathan Myhrvold, Microsoft's chief technology officer, and Peter Rinearson. In 1996, while redeploying Microsoft around the Internet, Gates thoroughly revised The Road Ahead to reflect his view that interactive networks are a major milestone in human history.

In addition to his passion for computers, Gates is interested in biotechnology. He sits on the board of the Icos Corporation and is a shareholder in Darwin Molecular, a subsidiary or British-based Chiroscience. He also founded Corbis Corporation, which is developing one of the largest resources of visual information in the world - a comprehensive digital archive of art and photography from public and private collections around the globe. Gates also has invested with cellular telephone pioneer Craig McCaw in Teledesic, a company that is working on an ambitious plan to launch hundreds of low-orbit satellites around the globe to provide worldwide two-way broadband telecommunications service.