Bill Gates’ family: one of the richest

Bill Gates’ parents:

William Henry Gates or Bill Gates, Sr (father, born 1925) and Mary Maxwell Gates (mother, born 1931- died 1994)

Bill Gates’ siblings:

Kristianne Gates Blake

and Elizabeth “Libby” Gates Armintrout

Bill Gates’ spouse:

Melinda Gates (born 1964, married to Bill since 1994)

Bill Gates’ children:

Bill Gates’ eldest daughter Jennifer Katharine Gates (born 1996)

Bill Gates’ son – Rory John Gates (born May 23, 1999)

Bill Gates’ younger  daughter Phoebe Adele Gates  (born 2002)

Bill Gate’s early years or how it all started

There is hardly anyone on our planet who knows nothing about this person. It is no wonder, because apart from being one of the richest people on Earth he is regarded as a person who is constantly trying to make our world better. He together with his friend Paul Allan is the co-founder of Microsoft Corporation. Besides that, Bill Gates is a famous entrepreneur, investor, author and the  person  who set up a charity organization.

His life story started in Seattle Washington DC on October 28, 1955. His parents were rather well off, so he together with his two siblings (Kristianne and Libby Gates) could afford themselves to buy everything that they wanted. His father William Henry Gates Sr (usually called “Bill”) was a prominent and rather successful lawyer. His mother,  Mary Maxwell Gates  started her career as a  simple school teacher and grew up to the person who was managing the First Interstate Bank.

Since his early childhood, Bill Gates was showing his exquisite skills at math.  He managed to pass the mathematical part of the intelligence test at school with the score 800 points that was the best result at that time.  However, his parents saw his career in the other sphere and wanted him to become the student of Harvard Law School.

The boy revealed his real talent while studying at Lakeside school. Its administration bought a new teletype machine and some computer time at the company General Electric. That was the moment when he fell in love with computers. He together with his friend Paul Allen  were spending hours trying to write the programs which could make the machine do some interesting things.  Also they spotted its weak points and managed to change the data of the program which showed the record of computer time.

Unfortunately the company noticed it and the school prohibited them using the computers for some time.   Later on, General Electric understood that their company needed better protection and invited Bill Gates with his friends to identify the security holes. They offered the boys to  have endless access to computers in return. It goes without saying that the boys agreed to it. One of the projects that Gates worked on was scheduling classes and “miraculously” the boys were always in the same group with the prettiest girls at school.

The next stage at his professional development was his work for the Information Science where he  was working on the program which would make-up payroll sheet. When Bill was just 15 he wrote the software that optimized road traffic and  found the customer who bought  it for $ 20, 000 dollars.

The only people who saw the threat in such a big sum of money where Bill’s parents. They were afraid that money could spoil their son and his enthusiasm would not lead him to anything good. So, they banned him from all computer projects. The next year the future genius of software programming spent entertaining himself with the biographies of famous people. However, they changed their mind when Bill was offered a job for Bonneville  with the revenue of $30,000 dollars.

When the boy entered Harvard University he had to choose either to become a lawyer as his father or a mathematician.  It appeared that Bill Gates had other plans about all those things. He set up his own software company Micro-Soft (the way it was spelled at the beginning).  Although they tried really hard the company was not in profit at the beginning. They even did not have enough money to hire a sales manager, so Bill’s mother volunteered to help them.  The main reason of such a bad start was that some of his employees were copying the software (MS Basic which he wrote) and sold it to the others.  Bill Gates was one of the first people who stated that software programming should be protected by law like other intellectual property (musical composition, etc).

In 1976,  he decided to drop university and devote all his time to the growing company. Definitely his parents disagreed with him about it, but Bill Gates never ever regretted about it.

Bill Gate’s family life

Bill Gate’s wife Melinda was born in Dallas in 1964 in the family of a house rental agent Ray French.  She is an incredibly smart and goal oriented woman that is sure that hard and persistent work may lead to the big result.  She was also very keen on computers. When she was 14 her father presented her the consumer computers Apple II and besides playing computer games on it she also started learning the programming language (The Basic). Later on she entered the Duke University and graduated from it with a degree in computer science and economics.

Melinda first met her future husband in 1987 at Expo trade-fair in New York. They  sat next to each other there and made very nice first impression on each other. Only several months later Bill invited her on the first date and in 1993 they got engaged and one year later they got married in Havaii on New Year’s Day.

Melinda is regarded as a  great philanthropist who cares about the others. She together with her husband organized the charity foundation  and help the people who are suffering from poverty. Her mother once said: “from those to whom much is given, much is expected”. She has made it her motto and nowadays spends more than 30 hours per week on foundation work.  They donate money to different projects but mostly the ones that require more than 40 million dollars in order to effect the greatest change.

The family has got 3 children Jennifer Katharine, Rory John and  Phoebe Adele Gates.

Their elder daughter is very fond of horse-back riding. She constantly participates in different competitions and wins there. Her Instagram photos prove that she never shows off with her wealth. She is currently studying at Stanford University.

His son is in his teens now. He is said to have no girlfriends and is extremely interested in science. One interesting fact about him is that he got his first phone at the age of thirteen. His parents believed that it is the right age to own it.

Unfortunately,  there is very little information known about their youngest daughter. She lives with her parents in the house that is worth more than 120 million dollars, has the swimming pool with underground water system, five kitchens and 24 bathrooms.

Although Bill Gates is regarded as one of the  richest people in the world he has the intention to donate nearly all his money that is currently 81 billion dollars to charity. His children will inherit just 3 per cent of this sum.  Bill and Melinda want  their children “to have the sense of their own ability and not end up squandering their lives“. They agree with such a decision of their parents and support their wish to help the world’s poorest.

What about Bill Gates` sisters, Kristi became his tax accountant and Libby brings up her 3 kids and is happy being the housewife.

All these facts about Bill Gates life prove once more that he is an incredibly noble, wise  and caring entrepreneur, husband and father!