SEATTLE (AP) – Paul G. Allen, who co-founded Microsoft with his childhood friend Bill Gates and became a billionaire philanthropist who invested in conservation, space travel and professional sports, died Monday. He was 65.
Earlier this month, Allen announced that the non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma that he was treated for in 2009 had returned and that he planned to fight it aggressively.
“While most knew Paul Allen as a technologist and philanthropist, for us he was a much-loved brother and uncle, and an exceptional friend,” said his sister, Jody Allen, in a statement.
Allen, who was an avid sports fan, owned the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers and the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks.
Allen and Gates met while attending a private school in north Seattle. The two friends would later drop out of college to pursue the future they envisioned: a world with a computer in every home.
Gates so strongly believed it that he left Harvard University in his junior year to devote himself full time to his and Allen’s startup, originally called Micro-Soft. Allen spent two years at Washington State University before dropping out as well.
They founded the company in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and their first product was a computer language for the Altair hobby-kit personal computer, giving hobbyists a basic way to program and operate the machine.
After Gates and Allen found some success selling their programming language, MS-Basic, the Seattle natives moved their business in 1979 to Bellevue, Washington, not far from its eventual home in Redmond.
Photo credit – Rick Bowmer / Associated Press / Salt Lake City, UT