Science & Leadership in Philly
Posted 07/12/2010
As a young person I was very lucky to get a great education. The teachers I had were just fantastic. I got interested in science and math, and at age 13 I got a chance to use a computer. That was kind of unusual then. My high school didn’t actually have a computer; only a teletype connected over a phone line to a very expensive machine, a million-dollar computer, of which there were less than 1,000 in the world at that time. We used a tiny piece of it, so-called timesharing, and played around with programs.
It was strange because the teachers were supposed to teach us how to program, but you had to spend money for computer time, and if you made a mistake in your program, you could spend a lot of money. A few teachers found it daunting. So they asked me and some friends to teach the programming class. That was fun. And then we were asked to schedule the school’s classes using software, and that was also fun, deciding who would be in my classes, and scheduling meetings according to when I had free time.
About then, the miracle of the microchip was happening. My school friend Paul Allen and I thought, well, this is unbelievable; these chips are going to get more powerful. Paul kept showing me the progress, and when I was in ninth grade, I said, well, I don't want to start a company until the microcomputer is better than what was called the minicomputer, which cost about $100,000. I said, “As soon as that chip is as good as a minicomputer, we should drop out.” It didn't happen until I was actually in college, but finally Intel came out with this chip that was really phenomenal, and Paul said, “Is this as good as we need?” And I said, yes, it is. And that's when Microsoft got started.
In this country, if you get a great education, particularly in the sciences, you get a chance to have a job that's fun, that pays well and that has impact. I wonder why it's not easier to explain to kids, back in fifth or sixth grade, the phenomenal payoff from learning and pursuing your curiosity. But it's hard. In our foundation work, we’re trying to improve education, so that more young people will have these opportunities.
The other big thing our Foundation does is try to improve things in poor countries. Of the 6 billion people in the world, 2 billion live in very tough conditions, where a lot of children die before the age of five, and people don't have enough food to eat. Applying scientific advances to the needs of the poor, we could eliminate almost all of those childhood deaths, and we could increase agricultural productivity to make those people self-sufficient.
There's been some progress. But we need new vaccines, we need seeds, we need people who understand science and are devoted to these causes. I'm hopeful that many of you will go into these fields, which are so cool, so interesting. I love my new job at the foundation, because I get to learn new things all the time, meet with scientists, back the people doing good work, and I think it's the most fun job in the world.
