ALFRED NOBEL is best remembered today not as the man who invented dynamite but as one who used most of his huge wealth to establish the Nobel prizes. A hundred years from now, Bill Gates may well be noted as one of the great philanthropists of the 21st century rather than one of the most influential people of the last century.
After 33 years at Microsoft, its co-founder and the world's third richest individual stepped down from day-to-day control of the software company yesterday to run the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, financed by his wealth and that of close friend Warren Buffet, the world's second richest man. The charitable foundation, with a bigger budget than the World Health Organisation, will fight Aids, malaria and poverty. This presents Mr Gates with a new and very different challenge. But it is one that he is well equipped and financially well-endowed to meet.
Three decades ago - as a Harvard dropout - Mr Gates helped to establish Microsoft and set an ambitious target in his prediction that the personal computer (PC) could be "on every desk and in every home". That goal has been achieved in the developed world and Microsoft is the main beneficiary. His utopian vision for the company involved a revolution in the computer business, then dominated by large mainframe computers, mainly from manufacturers such as IBM. Computer hardware costs fell as Intel developed a cheaper microprocessor for use on PCs. Microsoft developed the software for the operating system and sold it in large volume at a low profit margin to PC makers. This laid the foundations of the company's huge financial success. A mass market for computers was created by offering PCs to consumers at affordable prices. Today some 90 per cent of the world's computers use Microsoft software.
Microsoft's continuing challenge has been to exploit new opportunities in a fast-changing computing world. Here the company, which has always been more imitator than innovator, has been less successful. Microsoft's latest operating system has disappointed and the company failed recently in its bid to acquire Yahoo which would have allowed it to compete in the internet search and advertising market where it has been unable to challenge market leader Google.
That said, Bill Gates's first career has been one of remarkable achievement which has changed life as we know it. In his second as a philanthropist, he has set himself no less ambitious a task: addressing the world's medical, biological and environmental challenges.