Paul Allen, Microsoft Co-founder, Dies At The Age Of 65

Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, has died at the age of 65 as resulting from complications of non-Hodgkin Lymphoma. The disease had returned after the Microsoft co-founder had fought against it for 9 years.

Allen was born in Seattle and studied at the same school with Bill Gates. These two men still kept in touch despite going to different universities. Bill Gates went to Harvard while Allen chose Washington State.

In 1975,  Allen decided to drop out of his university as he wanted to start a software company with Bill Gate to develop software for The Altair 8800 - a microcomputer designed by MIITS in 1974. The company was initially named as Micro-Soft and then removed its hyphen in the following year to be Microsoft. In 1980, the company signed a contract with IBM to be the developer of DOS for the new PC series of IBM. With its success in PC as well as OC compatibles, the company turned out to be very successful.

Allen was first diagnosed with a type of cancer called Hodgkins’ lymphoma which was the main reason he left Microsoft. His departure from Microsoft was formally announced in 1983, be he still retained his ownership’s share and became a billionaire after the initial public offering of Microsoft.

With the huge amount of money he got from Microsoft, he founded an investment firm named Vulcan Inc. One of its priorities has been space as he funded an observatory project - Allen Telescope Array in 2001 and he also created a company specialized in space transportation called Stratolaunch in 2011. He also put local sports at the top priority as he bought an NFL team named the Seattle Seahawks in 1996 in order to stop the team from being transferred to California and he was also among minority owners of the Seattle Sounders - an American professional soccer.

He was also an investor that funded hundreds of millions of dollars in reaching diseases, bioscience and also artificial intelligence. He also made a significant funding to many organizations that aimed to fight Ebola epidemic happened from 2013 to 2016 in West Africa. The Microsoft co-founder also established a lot of institutions including Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle as he wanted to showcase his collection of aircraft, memorabilia, aircraft, and art as well.

Besides working, he was also very talented in playing guitar and he released an album in blues rock in 2013. Exploring undersea was also one of his interests and he had a lot of involvement in locating a lot of lost ships and plans.

Allen never got married and had no children.