In 1983, Microsoft began shipping the first versions of both MS-DOS and Microsoft Word and, in 1986, Microsoft had an initial public offering of $61 million.

By 1993, eight years after being introduced, Windows counted 25 million users worldwide.

In the last fiscal year, Microsoft counted revenues of more than $25 billion in revenues with a staff of over 48,000 worldwide.

A hostile stock market and an anti-trust suit have pushed Microsoft stock down about $66 in the past two years, to $53.26 at press time.

Although Bill Gates has a personal fortune of over $50 billion, he has pledged that he will leave little to his children and give most of it to charity.

To date, Gates has endowed the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation with over $20 billion.

The foundation, run by Gates’ father, has already distributed over $2 billion to help fight global disease and $500 million to increase learning opportunities in both the U.S. and around the world.

“He’s really in a different league, both in his age and in the amount of money” says Sara L. Engelhardt, president of the Foundation Center, an organization that monitors philanthropy. “Unlike most private foundations who receive one stock, the Gates Foundation immediately diversifies its portfolio, and unlike most individuals, Gates has given so much money to charity in some years that he has not been able to claim the full tax deduction.”

But Gates has not only made an impact on the world at large but also on those who have known him on a personal level.

“Rooming with Bill was a wonderful, intense, terrific experience,” Znaimer says.

—Staff writer Nicholas F. Josefowitz can be reached at josefow@fas.harvard.edu.