(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 .