The Fabulous Life Of Bill Gates

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With a net worth of approximately $78.9 billion, Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates is the wealthiest man in the World.Gates has been a public fixture ever since he and Paul Allen started a computer revolution in the 1980s. He has all of the toys you would expect from the world's richest man, from a private jet to a 66,000-square-foot home he nicknamed Xanadu 2.0.Yet as his wealth has grown, Gates has done more and more philanthropy work, donating billions of dollars to charity projects through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Bill Gates was born on Oct. 28, 1955, in Seattle, Washington. Son of a lawyer and a schoolteacher, he was an argumentative but brilliant child. As a teenager, his appetite for knowledge was so great that he read the entire "World Book Encyclopedia" series from start to finish.

His parents enrolled him at the Lakeside School, a rigorous Seattle private high school that future Microsoft co founder Paul Allen also attended. Gates often credits his discovery of computers to the tools he gained at Lakeside. "The experience and insight Paul Allen and I gained here gave us the confidence to start a company based on this wild idea that nobody else agreed with — that computer chips were going to become so powerful that computers and software would become a tool that would be on every desk and in every home," he said in a 2005 speech at the school.Gates stepped down from his position as CEO of Microsoft in 2000, taking on a more limited role as chairman. Nowadays, he serves as technology adviser to current CEO Satya Nadella. When he's not working on something with Microsoft, Gates and wife Melinda travel to do charity work through their foundation.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has had its hand in a number of projects, from eradicating diseases in remote corners of the world to developing richer sources of food for impoverished people.In 2010, Bill and Melinda teamed up with Warren Buffett to start a campaign called "The Giving Pledge," which encouraged fellow billionaires to donate at least half of their wealth to philanthropy. Paul Allen, Larry Ellison, Steve Case, and Mark Zuckerberg are among those who have signed the pledge so far.

Gates has made a number of investments in startups like Hampton Creek, which aims to find plant replacements for eggs. He is also backing several projects developing next-generation condoms, in the hopes that they could help stop the spread of HIV and AIDS.