Paul Allen

Lakeside School and the meeting with Bill Gates

Paul Gardner Allen was born January 21, 1953, in Seattle, Washington. His father Kenneth was the associate director of libraries at the University of Washington; his mother Faye taught at a Seattle elementary school. The family was solidly middle-class and prioritized education.

Allen attended Lakeside School, a private Seattle preparatory school. Lakeside was unusual in the late 1960s in having early access to time on a General Electric computer via the Mothers' Club's funding for what became one of the first secondary-school computer-access programs in the United States. Allen, two years ahead of Bill Gates, was an early enthusiast of the GE program and of the subsequent DEC PDP-10 access that the school arranged.

Allen's reported IQ of approximately 170 comes from Lakeside-administered testing during this period. The figure is cited in his 2011 memoir Idea Man and in the early Microsoft biographies, but the original testing record is not publicly archived. Allen has been generally discreet about the specific score in interviews, treating it as a piece of background context rather than as a defining detail.

Pre-Microsoft computing career

Allen attended Washington State University starting in 1971 but dropped out in 1974 to work as a programmer at Honeywell in Boston. The Honeywell job placed him near Bill Gates, who was then at Harvard. They began collaborating on small-scale software projects.

In 1975 Allen saw the Popular Electronics cover featuring the MITS Altair 8800 microcomputer kit. He showed the cover to Gates; the two of them recognized that a BASIC interpreter for the Altair would have commercial potential. They wrote Altair BASIC over several weeks - Allen developing the simulator that allowed them to test the code on Harvard's PDP-10 before they had access to actual Altair hardware.

Allen flew to Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1975 to demonstrate Altair BASIC to MITS. The demonstration succeeded; MITS licensed the software; Allen and Gates founded Microsoft (originally "Micro-Soft") in Albuquerque in April 1975. Allen was 22; Gates was 19.

Microsoft years (1975-1983)

Allen was Microsoft's primary technical architect through its early years. He was the lead developer of the company's early BASIC implementations across different microcomputer architectures, was involved in the negotiations to license MS-DOS to IBM in 1981 (the deal that established Microsoft's long-term position in the PC market), and oversaw early Microsoft work on operating systems and development tools.

In 1982 Allen was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma. He undertook radiation treatment and went into remission, but the experience prompted him to leave full-time Microsoft work in 1983. He stayed on the Microsoft board for years afterward; his retained Microsoft equity was the basis of his subsequent wealth.

His role in Microsoft's early years has been variously assessed. Allen's 2011 memoir Idea Man emphasized his own contributions and criticized Gates's handling of equity decisions in the early years. The book provoked public disagreement with Gates, who responded with his own version of the history in subsequent interviews. The truth of the early-Microsoft history is now substantially documented in archives and biographies; Allen's technical centrality to the early product is generally agreed even where the equity disputes are not.

Investment, sports, and philanthropy

After leaving Microsoft Allen became one of the largest sports owners in the United States, purchasing the Portland Trail Blazers (NBA, 1988) and the Seattle Seahawks (NFL, 1997). He also purchased the Seattle Sounders (MLS, 2009). His sports holdings were unusual for their geographic concentration in the Pacific Northwest.

In 2003 he founded the Allen Institute for Brain Science with a $100 million initial endowment. The Institute's mission is the systematic, open-data mapping of the brain. The Allen Brain Atlas - a comprehensive gene-expression atlas of the mouse brain published in 2006 - has been one of the most-cited neuroscience resources of the 21st century.

He extended the Institute approach to the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (2014), the Allen Institute for Cell Science (2014), and the Allen Institute for Immunology (2018). The Institutes' open-data mandate has been a distinctive feature: their primary output is publicly available datasets and tools rather than closed-IP products. The Allen Telescope Array searches for extraterrestrial radio signals; Stratolaunch was an air-launch space-vehicle program he funded.

Last years and legacy

Allen's Hodgkin's lymphoma returned in 2009; he received treatment and went into remission again. In 2018 he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma and died on October 15, 2018, in Seattle. He was 65.

His estate left over $26 billion to philanthropy, which is administered by Vulcan Inc. and the various Allen Institutes. The bequest is among the largest single philanthropic transfers in U.S. history. The Allen Institutes have continued their open-data scientific work; the sports teams were transferred to estate-administered ownership structures.

His legacy in the technology industry is complicated. He was unambiguously a co-founder of Microsoft, but his post-1983 distance from the company's commercial development meant he did not share Bill Gates's subsequent public identification with the company. His later identification has been as a science philanthropist rather than as a technology executive. His Allen Institute approach to open-data biology has been influential in 21st-century neuroscience.

Timeline

• 1953Born in Seattle, Washington.
• 1965Attends Lakeside School; begins computing on the GE time-sharing system.
• 1968Meets Bill Gates, two years his junior at Lakeside.
• 1971Enters Washington State University.
• 1974Drops out of Washington State; takes a programming job at Honeywell in Boston.
• 1975Co-founds Microsoft with Bill Gates after writing Altair BASIC.
• 1980Microsoft licenses MS-DOS to IBM.
• 1982Diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma.
• 1983Leaves full-time Microsoft work.
• 1988Purchases the Portland Trail Blazers.
• 1997Purchases the Seattle Seahawks.
• 2003Founds the Allen Institute for Brain Science.
• 2011Publishes Idea Man memoir.
• 2014Founds Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Allen Institute for Cell Science.
• 2018Dies in Seattle of non-Hodgkin lymphoma at age 65.

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