Bill Gates

Most people meet him now through the writing and the talks — the notes on global health, the arguments about what money and attention should be pointed at. Before that came Microsoft, and before that a childhood in Seattle, where he was born on 28 October 1955. The two halves of his public reputation, the software company and the health work, have long since fused into a single shorthand.

He came up as a programmer and an entrepreneur, and the habits that show up in his later output were formed early: reading closely, watching how things actually worked, testing an assumption rather than accepting it. Collaboration and argument mattered — ideas got worked over in conversation until they held. Small experiments hardened into method. Failures were treated as information about what the goal really was, not as a reason to stop.

The mid-career projects were larger and less forgiving. Allies, competitors and institutions all wanted results, and the pressure sharpened both technique and temperament. What he learned there was eventually written down in a form others could pick up and apply to their own situations, which is much of why the material still circulates. Public argument tested those claims and, where they survived, made them sturdier.

Later on the emphasis shifted towards teaching and towards leaving something usable behind — notes, standards, written guidance, published at Gates Notes. Readers in many languages keep finding practical use in it. People still disagree over how to read his record, which is itself a sign the questions he worked on remain open.