Meet Genius - wwwTalks | IT ideas, updates, & many more!

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In the computer industry, you've got an interdisciplinary team of people who can come together, attack the problem, and work in a collaborative style. You knock down one problem after another, cobble things together, and then hopefully turn the crank at some point.

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His Lifetime Giving Totals More Than $1.8 Billion
Through his Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, Allen is one of the world’s leading philanthropists. He’s supported several innovative initiatives, including a $26 million gift to build Washington State University’s School for Global Animal Health, a $300 million donation to expand the Allen Institute for Brain Science, a $100 million pledge to help tackle the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, and a $100 million gift to create the new Allen Institute for Cell Science.
He Co-Founded Microsoft
A Seattle-area native, Allen co-founded Microsoft with childhood friend Bill Gates in 1975 to develop and sell computer software. The company is now headquartered in Redmond, Wash. and valued at $343 billion as of May 2014 by Forbes.com.
He Became A Billionaire At Age 37
In 1990, seven years after resigning from Microsoft, Allen joined the billionaires club.
He Purchased The Seahawks In 1997
Allen developed a fondness for his hometown team over the years and purchased the franchise in 1997 after former owner Ken Behring had threatened to move the team to Southern California.
He Was Closely Involved In The Design Process Of CenturyLink Field
After purchasing the team, Allen set his sights on building a world-class stadium for the state that the Seahawks could call home. He was closely involved in the stadium’s design process, emphasizing an open-air venue that still maintained an intimate atmosphere.
He Owns The Portland Trail Blazers, Too
Allen purchased the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers in 1988, and like his involvement with the construction of Seattle’s CenturyLink Field, he was instrumental in the development and funding of the Rose Garden – the Trail Blazers’ home now known as the Moda Center.
He’s A Minority Owner Of Seattle Sounders FC
Vulcan, Inc., Allen’s investment and project management firm he founded with his sister Jody in 1986, owns a minority share of Seattle Sounders FC, the city’s Major League Soccer franchise that plays its matches at CenturyLink Field.
He’s A Musician
Allen and his blues-based guitar rock band The Underthinkers made their major label debut in August 2013 with their first album “Everywhere At Once.” All proceeds from the band’s project fund education-based programs at Allen’s Seattle-based EMP Museum. A songwriter and guitarist since he was a teenager, Allen either wrote or co-wrote all 13 tracks on the album.
He Grew Up In The Space Race
Allen grew up in the Space Race era and has always been intrigued by space exploration. In 2011, he sponsored the development SpaceShipOne, the first privately-based effort to successfully put a civilian in suborbital space.
He Released His Memoirs In 2011
Allen released his memoirs – “Idea Man” – in 2011, detailing his life of adventure and discovery.

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Paul Allen was born on 21 January 1953 in Seattle, Washington, to Kenneth Samuel Allen and Edna Faye Allen. His father was an associate director of the University of Washington libraries. His mother also worked as a librarian.
Allen’s parents helped him and his sister Jody develop a wide variety of interests and used to take them to museums, galleries and concerts. He started showing great interest in science from an early age. When he was 10 years old, his mother, Faye used to hold science club meetings for his grade school.
Allen went to the Lakeside School in Seattle – it was a private school and it is here that he met and became close friends with Bill Gates. At that time Allen was 14 years old and Gates was 12 and both were computer enthusiasts. It was in Lakeside’s Teletype terminal that both the friends started to develop their programming skills on numerous time-sharing computer systems.
Allen got admission into the Washington State University after scoring 1600 on his SAT but decided to discontinue his studies after two years in order to work for Honeywell in Boston, as a programmer. He also convinced his close friend and fellow computer enthusiast, Bill Gates, to drop out of Harvard University to work on an innovative project.

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2008 – Vanguard Award
1999 – Regents’ Distinguished Alumnus Award
2008 – Herbie Hancock Humanitarian Award for visionary achievements
2011 – Seattle Sports Commission Sports Citizen of the Year

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Attended Washington State University, 1972-1974

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In 1975, Allen and Gates started to market a BASIC computer programming language interpreter and co-founded Microsoft in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was Allen who came up with the name ‘Microsoft’ for the company, as documented in a Fortune magazine article years later.
In 1980, Allen materialized a deal for Microsoft to buy a Quick and Dirty Operating System, which was invented by Tim Paterson, an employ at the Seattle Computer Products. This deal led the company to develop Disk Operating System, which they delivered to IBM and ran it on IBM’s PC line. The IBM deal made Allen and Gates rich and famous.
In 1982, Allen was detected with Hodgkin’s lymphoma and underwent several months of Chemotherapy. Due to his degrading health conditions Allen took himself away from the workings and businesses of Microsoft and resigned from his position on the Board of Directors in 2000. He was still the senior strategy advisor to the company’s executives.
In 1986, Allen founded the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation for the advancement of health and human services – his contribution to the development of science and technology. The foundation gives 30 million US dollars every year as grant to various humanitarian and scientific projects.
In 1992, Allen and David Liddle founded the Interval Research Corporation. It was a Silicon Valley-based laboratory which was finally disbanded after making over 300 patents. Some of these are famous patent infringement lawsuits against big shot companies like Apple, Yahoo!, YouTube, Google, Facebook, Netflix, eBay, AOL, Office Depot, OfficeMax, etc.
In 1993, Allen bought 80 percent of Ticketmaster by investing 243 million US dollars into it. Under his leadership, Ticketmaster was moved into internet in 1995 by showing searchable database and in 1996 its first transaction on the internet took place. The company was made public in the same year.
Allen purchased his first professional sports team—the Seattle Seahawks NFL team—in 1996. The threat from the former owner of the team, Ken Behring, to Southern California inspired him to buy the team. In 1998, he purchased his second team the Portland Trail Blazers NBA for a sum of 70 million US dollars from a Californian real estate developer Larry Weinberg. By 2010, the Portland Trail Blazers were valued 356 million US Dollars and ranked at number 14 on NBA teams.
In 2003, Faye G. Allen Center for Visual Arts was established in the Washington State University – it was named after Allen’s mother. He also donated 14 million US dollars in the establishment of the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering, which was designed by LMN Architects of Seattle. For years Allen donated a large sum of money to the University of Washington Medical School.
In 2003, Allen, along with his sister Jo Lynn, founded the Allen Institute for Brain Science by donating 100 million US dollars to it. The data founded in the organization is free and publically available through Allen Brain Atlas application. It is a non-profit organization.
In 2008, he established the Allen Spinal Cord Atlas online mouse gene map by investing 41 million US dollars into it. The project helps the researches to access the existing spinal cord research data to understand better how a disease or an injury can affect the spinal cord system. The map helps in unlocking new diagnoses for existing human neurological disorders by pointing at the places where the genes are active.
In 2011, Allen announced the launch of the first private space transport system called the Stratolaunch Systems. It is a project for the orbital launch of a dual bodied jet aircraft which will carry a rocket to a high altitude. In the same year, his yacht Octopus was listed in the list of motor yachts and was named as the largest yacht in the world in 2003. The yacht has two helicopters, two submarines, a basketball court, swimming pool, etc.
Allen, along with his sister Jo, is the co-owner and executive producer of a filmmaking production company in Seattle called Vulcan Productions. The aim of the company is to finance the innovative and depth oriented independent film projects. In 2011, the company financed a film called ‘The Emotional Life’ which was a documentary on the subject of psychology that inspects human desire and craves for happiness.
In 2011, Allen’s memoir was published under the title of ‘Idea Man: A Memoir by the Cofounder of Microsoft’ and in 2012 the paperback version of the memoir was released with a new epilogue. In the book he mentioned how he and Bill Gates developed Microsoft and how they were ready to launch the idea even when it initially sounded too superfluous.

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Other names

Paul Gardner Allen

Born in

Seattle, Washington

Nationality

American

Father

Kenneth S. Allen

Mother

Faye G. Allen

Siblings

Jody Allen

Children

Paul Allen has no children

Net worth

US$20.7 billion (June 2017)

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Quotes

Now, we are selling over 5 million songs a day now. Isn't that unbelievable? That's 58 songs every second of every minute of every hour of every day.
It takes these very simple-minded instructions - 'Go fetch a number, add it to this number, put the result there, perceive if it's greater than this other number' - but executes them at a rate of, let's say, 1,000,000 per second. At 1,000,000 per second, the results appear to be magic.
Each year has been so robust with problems and successes and learning experiences and human experienes that a year is a lifetime at Apple. So this has been ten lifetimes.
The reason we wouldn't make a seven-inch tablet isn't because we don't want to hit a price point, it's because we don't think you can make a great tablet with a seven-inch screen.
The manual for WordStar, the most popular word-processing program, is 400 pages thick. To write a novel, you have to read a novel - one that reads like a mystery to most people. They're not going to learn slash q-z any more than they're going to learn Morse code. That is what Macintosh is all about.

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