Gates, Bill，原名William Henry Gates III。
美國電腦程式設計師和企業家。出生於華盛頓州西雅圖，高中時代曾協助組建了一個電腦程式設計人員小組，把學校的薪資系統電腦化，並創辦了一家公司向當地政府出售交通量計算系統。十九歲時從哈佛大學輟學，與艾倫（Paul G. Allen, 1954～）合夥成立微軟公司。當1980年微軟授權IBM公司在其第一批個人電腦（personal computer）上使用MS-DOS（微軟磁碟作業系統）時，蓋茲在剛萌芽的微電腦業中開始發揮支配的力量。之後，他也開始發展應用軟體，如試算表、文書處理程式，到了1980年代末，微軟已是這種軟體和作業系統的主要供應商。1990年開發出「視窗3.0」（Windows 3.0），很快成為全世界最普及的作業系統。蓋茲在三十一歲就成為億萬富翁，現今是世界上最富有的人。1999年他和妻子成立一個美國最大的慈善基金會。
1955年～
Gates, Bill
U.S. computer programmer and businessman. Gates was born in Seattle, Wash. As a teenager, he helped form a group of computer programmers who computerized their high school's payroll system and founded a company that sold traffic-counting systems to local governments. At 19 he dropped out of Harvard University and cofounded Microsoft Corp. with Paul G. Allen (born 1954). Microsoft began its domination of the fledgling microcomputer industry when Gates licensed the operating system MS-DOS to IBM in 1980 for use in IBM's first personal computer. He then began developing application software such as spreadsheets and word-processing programs, and by the late 1980s Microsoft was one of the leading suppliers of such software as well as operating systems. In 1990 it introduced Windows 3.0, which quickly became the most popular operating system worldwide. A billionaire at 31, Gates is today the wealthiest private person in the world. In 1999 he and his wife created the largest charitable foundation in the United States.
