(Bill) Gates - Chairman and chief executive officer of Microsoft.
He is reported to be the richest private individual in the .
World topping the Forbes list of richest people for both 1996 and 1997 .
INVENTIONS .
Gates and his pal Paul Allen produced two programs in the 8th grade: one played .
tic-tac-toe. Before long, they were moonlighting as adolescent computer consultants for a local .
corporation. In high school, Gates and his friends devised a program that analyzed traffic data .
for his hometown .
Windows takes over .
Soon after Gates unveiled his Windows 3.0 program in 1990, the applications software .
industry was crying uncle. Over 60 million copies of the Windows progam were sold, which .
established Microsoft's operating system as the PC software standard and left companies like .
Lotus and WordPerfect scrambling because they had been creating applications for IBM's .
system, the OS/2. Six years after the Windows launch, Microsoft dominates the word processing .
and spreadsheet mark. .
Corporation as Cult .
The suburban Microsoft "campus," a cluster of 35 low-rise buildings, is set among lawns, .
groves of white pines and shady courtyards that make the place resemble a college. But in .
contrast to the sedate intellectualism of the average college, Microsoft rewards the brusque .
"math camp" mentality: a lot of cocky geeks willing to wave their fingers and yell with the cute .
conviction that all problems have a right answer. Among Gates favorite phrases is "That's the .
stupidest thing I've ever heard," and victims wear it as a badge of honor, bragging about it the .
way they do about getting a late-night E-mail from him. .
POSSESSIONS .
Built into a bluff fronting Lake Washington, the home Gates has been working on for .