Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen died on Monday in Seattle, age 65. His family says it was due to complication of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a disease Allen said he was being treated for earlier this month.
Born in 21 January 1953, Allen was a childhood friend of Bill Gates. The two founded Microsoft back in 1975. Allen claimed he was the one to come up with the name "Micro-Soft," and was instrumental in buying what was to become MS-DOS from a Seattle programmer. Allen left Microsoft in 1983 after learning he was suffering from Hodgkin's lymphoma, and remained a member of the board until 2000. In 2009 he started receiving treatment for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, before he went into remission. However the disease returned on October 2018.
"I am heartbroken by the passing of one of my oldest and dearest friends, Paul Allen," Gates says. "From our early days together at Lakeside School, through our partnership in the creation of Microsoft, to some of our joint philanthropic projects over the years, Paul was a true partner and dear friend. Personal computing would not have existed without him."
Being a Microsoft founder left Allen immensely wealthy. After leaving the company Allen formed Vulcan, a company with holdings as varied as the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle, a group using machine learning to study climate change, spaceplane developer Stratolaunch and a pair of sports teams, the Seattle Seahawks and Portland Trail Blazers. He was also something of a philanthropist, donating around $3 billion to various nonprofits and worthy causes.
