Bill Gates fourth most powerful person in the world in 2012, up from fifth in 2011. In 1994, he was honored as the 20th Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society (DFBCS). In 1999, Gates received New York Institute of Technology's President's Medal. Gates has received honorary doctorates from Nyenrode Business Universiteit, Breukelen, The Netherlands, in 2000; KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, in 2002; Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, in 2005; Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in April 2007; Harvard University in June 2007; the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, in 2007, and Cambridge University in June 2009. He was also made an honorary
Bill Gates Sr. Regents for the University of Washington, and is a co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which his son Bill and his daughter-in-law Melinda founded. He has served as a director for Costco Wholesale, a bulk retail corporation, since 2003. He is also a founding co-chair of the Pacific Health Summit. He has adopted the suffix "Sr." to distinguish himself from his more famous son. Gates is co-author, with Chuck Collins, of the book "Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes", a defense of the policies promoted by the estate tax. He married Mary Maxwell Gates