CO-FOUNDER OF MICROSOFT DIES

PAUL Allen, who co-founded Microsoft with fellow billionaire Bill Gates and used the fortune he made from the iconic technology company to invest in professional sports teams, cable

TV and real estate, has died. He was 65. Allen died on Monday in Seattle from complications of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, according to a statement from Vulcan, his investment firm. Allen’s source for his varied investments and sizeable charitable donations was his oncemajor stake in Redmond, Washingtonbased Microsoft. He had a net worth of $26.1 billion (R376.3bn), according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Allen, along with Gates, helped create an entire industry selling software for a new breed of smaller, more affordable and widely accessible computers. “I am heartbroken by the passing of one of my oldest and dearest friends,” Gates said. “Paul was a true partner and dear friend. Personal computing would not have existed without him.” Allen stepped down as an officer of the company in 1983 because he was grappling with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. In 2009, he was treated for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which two weeks ago he said had returned. “A hi-tech demigod” is how Sports Illustrated described the man who came up with the name for Microsoft, a company whose ubiquitous products include the Windows operating system and the Office suite of software. “He is one of the richest men in history, a figure of such dizzying wealth and eclectic tastes that he recently donated $100 million to brain research and $25m to the search for extraterrestrial life,” the magazine wrote in a 2007 profile. Paul Gardner Allen was born on January 21, 1953, in Seattle to Kenneth and Faye Allen. His father was a university library executive and his mother was a teacher. Allen went to the Lakeside School, where he met a younger Gates and the two worked on early computer programs in the school’s lab.