Bill Gates with the Office of the Secretary of the State of New Mexico. Gates never returned to Harvard to complete his studies. Microsoft's Altair BASIC was popular with computer hobbyists, but Gates discovered that a pre-market copy had leaked into the community and was being widely copied and distributed. In February 1976, Gates wrote an Open Letter to Hobbyists in the MITS newsletter in which he asserted that more than 90 percent of the users of Microsoft Altair BASIC had not paid Microsoft for it and by doing so the Altair "hobby market" was in danger of eliminating the incentive for
Melinda Gates the top student in her class year. Melinda graduated as valedictorian from Ursuline Academy of Dallas in 1982. She earned a bachelor's degree in computer science and economics from Duke University in 1986 and an MBA from Duke's Fuqua School of Business in 1987. At Duke, Melinda was a member of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority, Beta Rho Chapter. Shortly after graduating from college, Melinda joined Microsoft and participated in the development of many of Microsoft's multimedia products, including Publisher, Microsoft Bob, Encarta, and Expedia. She met Bill Gates while working at Microsoft. In 1994, she married Gates in a