Gates To Return to The Yard

While the University celebrates the accomplishments of its newest graduates today, the keynote speaker addressing them might feel a little out of the loop.

In 1975, Bill Gates left the College to develop Microsoft, making him a billionaire—and one of Harvard’s most successful dropouts.

In lieu of the bachelor’s degree he gave up to start his business, Gates will receive an honorary degree from the University during this today’s Commencement ceremony.

After stepping down as Microsoft’s chief executive in 2000, Gates has devoted his energies and wealth to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a philanthropic organization that funds health and anti-poverty programs in the developing world.

Paul J. Finnegan ’75, outgoing president of the Harvard Alumni Association, said that Gates’ generosity makes him one of the most highly anticipated commencement speakers in years.

“As our speaker, Bill Gates represents an achiever,” Finnegan said. “We are all inspired to hear how to give back, and Bill Gates and his wife Melinda are revolutionizing the world of philanthropy.”

THE GATES OF HARVARD YARD

Gates was born on Oct. 28, 1955 and spent his childhood in Seattle, Wash.

When Gates—a denizen of Wigglesworth Hall A-11 during his freshman year—first arrived at Harvard in 1973, few classes succeeded in captivating him in the same way that the computer industry would a few years later.

In a 1995 autobiography, Gates wrote that he paid little attention in his courses and would “furiously inhale the key books just before an exam.” He self-identified as a “philosophical depressed guy, trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life.”

Despite Gates’ inattentiveness in the classroom, few questioned his brilliance. He enrolled in graduate level courses and seldom appeared intimidated, even though he was often the youngest person in the lecture hall.

Henry H. Leitner, who was then in his first year as a graduate student at the Division of Applied Sciences, recalled that Gates—a sophomore at the time—was enrolled in one of his applied mathematics courses in the spring of 1975.

Gates, who would always address the class with a “high-pitched voice,” was taking the course because he was “looking for a challenge,” said Leitner, who is now the assistant dean for continuing education for information and technology.

“He generally would choose to work hard on the problems that he found most interesting or challenging, and tended to leave the rest for me to wrestle with,” recalled Leitner, who worked with Gates on class assignments.

“While I may have been occasionally frustrated by the lack of time and attention he gave the problem sets, I was very impressed by his intelligence and ability to work with theoretical constructs,” he said.

GIVING BACK

Though he left Harvard two years earlier than his classmates, Gates—who also founded the digital photo and art archive Corbis—has given generously to the University that he briefly called home.

In 1996, he and Steven A. Ballmer ’77, Microsoft’s current chief executive officer and Gates’s college acquaintance, contributed $25 million to construct the computer science building Maxwell Dworkin.

And more recently, in 2000, the Gates Foundation gave a five-year, $45 million grant to a Harvard Medical School program aimed at battling multi-drug resistant tuberculosis in Peru.

The Gates Foundation currently has an endowment of approximately $33 billion.

McKay Professor of Computer Science Harry R. Lewis ’68, who taught Gates as an undergraduate in two courses, described Gates’ philanthropy as “extraordinary.”

“He is an appropriate speaker for both reasons, someone for our graduates to look up to and respect for what he has done with his life,” Lewis said.

—Staff writer Kevin Zhou can be reached at kzhou@fas.harvard.edu.