In full Paul Gardner Allen ( 1953 - )
Co-Founder, Microsoft
In my own work, I've tried to anticipate what's coming over the horizon, to hasten its arrival, and to apply it to people's lives in a meaningful way. -Paul Allen
Paul Gardner Allen, born January 21, 1953, is an American investor and philanthropist who co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates and is one of the wealthiest people in the world with a personal wealth of US$13.5 billion as of 2010. He is the founder and chairman of Vulcan Inc., which manages his business and philanthropic efforts.
Paul Allen was born in Seattle, Washington, to parents Kenneth S. Allen, an associate director of the University of Washington libraries. Allen attended Lakeside School, a private school in Seattle, and befriended Bill Gates, who was almost three years his junior but shared a common enthusiasm for computers. They used Lakeside's teletype terminal to develop their programming skills on several time-sharing computer systems.
After graduation, Allen attended Washington State University, where he was a member of Phi Kappa Theta Fraternity but dropped out after two years in order to work as a programmer for Honeywell in Boston, placing him near his old friend again. Allen later convinced Gates to drop out of Harvard University in order to create Microsoft.
Paul Allen has made contributions to organizations related to health and human services, and toward the advancement of science and technology. The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation was established in 1986 to administer most of his contributions. Through the Foundation, Allen awards approximately $30 million in grants annually. Roughly 60% of the Foundation's money goes to non-profit organizations in Seattle and the state of Washington, and 12% to Portland, Oregon. The remaining 28% is distributed to other cities within the Pacific Northwest and internationally.
Allen founded the museum in 2000. The award was presented as part of a gala benefit for EMP. The finale was a four-song set with all the evening's musicians on stage, including Allen and Robertson on guitar.
Paul Allen is also a founding member of The International SeaKeepers Society and hosts its proprietary SeaKeeper 1000TM oceanographic and atmospheric monitoring system on all three of his megayachts.
With his sister, Jo Lynn Allen, Paul Allen pledged $100 million in 2003 to found the Allen Institute for Brain Science, a nonprofit corporation (501(c) (3)) and medical research organization. Utilizing the mouse model system (given its great similarity to human DNA), 20,000 genes in the adult mouse brain were mapped to a cellular level for the Allen Brain Atlas. The data generated from this effort is contained in the free and publicly available Allen Brain Atlas application.
In 2008, the Institute also launched the Allen Spinal Cord Atlas project. All of these scientific findings will prove invaluable to international researchers working on cures for neurological and nervous system illnesses and injuries.
On November 15, 2009, Jody Allen, Paul Allen's sister and the CEO of Vulcan made public that Paul had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a form of blood cancer. As of October 2010, he has been free of cancer.
Allen has donated more than $1 billion of his money, as of 2010. That includes charitable projects known as "venture philanthropy". The most famous of these projects are the Experience Music Project, Seattle Cinerama Theatre, the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, the Flying Heritage Collection (airworthy vintage military aircraft) and the Allen Telescope Array (ATA).
Article : Penh Sothavy
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Reference :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Allen
http://www.biography.com
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/p/paul_allen.html