Paul G. Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, philanthropist, owner of two professional sports teams in New York, Jan. 31, 2014.BEATRICE DE GEA/The New York Times
Paul G. Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft who helped usher in the personal computing revolution and then channelled his enormous fortune into transforming Seattle into a cultural destination, died Monday in Seattle. He was 65.
The cause was complications of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, his family said in a statement.
The disease recurred recently after having been in remission for years. He left Microsoft in the early 1980s, after the cancer first appeared, and, using his enormous wealth, went on to make a powerful impact on Seattle life through his philanthropy and his ownership of an NFL team there, ensuring that it would remain in the city.
Mr. Allen was a force at Microsoft during its first seven years, along with his co-founder, Bill Gates, as the personal computer was moving from a hobbyist curiosity to a mainstream technology, used by both businesses and consumers.
When the company was founded in 1975, the machines were known as microcomputers, to distinguish the desktop computers from the hulking machines of the day. Mr. Allen came up with the name Micro-Soft, an apt one for a company that made software for small computers.
The company’s first product was a much-compressed version of the Basic programming language, designed to suit those underpowered machines. Yet the company’s big move came when it promised computer giant IBM that it would deliver the operating system software for IBM’s entry into the personal-computer business. Mr. Gates and Mr. Allen committed to supplying that software in 1980.
At the time, it was a promise without a product. But Mr. Allen was instrumental in putting together a deal to buy an early operating system from a programmer in Seattle. He and Mr. Gates tweaked and massaged the code, and it became the operating system that guided the IBM personal computer, introduced in 1981.
That product, called Microsoft Disk Operating System, or MS-DOS, was a watershed for the company. Later would come Microsoft’s immensely popular Windows operating system, designed to be used with a computer mouse and onscreen icons – point-and-click computing rather than typed commands. The company would also produce the Office productivity programs for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations.
“In his own quiet and persistent way, he created magical products, experiences and institutions, and in doing so, he changed the world,” Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s current chief executive, said of Mr. Allen in a statement.
Mr. Allen’s partnership with Mr. Gates began when they were teenagers attending the private Lakeside School in Seattle. It was there that they got their start in computing, working from a school Teletype terminal that was linked to a far-away mainframe computer under a time-sharing computer system, in which operators paid for the computing time they used. Funds for the system were originally supplied by proceeds from a school bake sale.
Mr. Allen scored a perfect 1,600 on his SAT test, and went on to Washington State University. But after two years, he dropped out to work as a programmer for Honeywell in Boston. Mr. Gates was nearby, attending Harvard University.
When an early microcomputer was introduced, appearing on the cover of Popular Electronics magazine, Mr. Allen persuaded Mr. Gates to drop out of Harvard and move to Albuquerque, N.M., where a startup called MITS had built a machine that has been credited as the first personal computer. The machine lacked software, and Mr. Allen and Mr. Gates, showing up at the MITS offices, promised that they could supply it.
Their first offering was Microsoft BASIC. Both Mr. Gates and Mr. Allen were skilled code creators, but Mr. Gates was more the hard-charging, volatile businessman, while Mr. Allen played the peacemaker and negotiator in those early days.
Within a few years, Microsoft moved to suburban Seattle. Although Mr. Allen stepped away from daily duties at Microsoft in the early 1980s, partly because of a deteriorating relationship with Mr. Gates, he remained on the Microsoft board until 2000.
Mr. Gates said in a statement Monday: “Paul was a true partner and dear friend. Personal computing would not have existed without him.”
As Microsoft became the dominant personal-computer software company, Mr. Allen and Mr. Gates became immensely wealthy. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Mr. Allen had a net worth of US$26.1-billion.
He was also an investor and a generous philanthropist.
Mr. Allen donated more than US$2-billion toward non-profit groups dedicated to the advancement of science, technology, education, the environment and the arts. Among the scientific research organizations he funded were the Allen Institute for Brain Science in 2003 and the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence in 2014.
And while some of his philanthropy was global, such as a passion for ending elephant poaching, much of his post-Microsoft work centred on Seattle, where he became a transformative force behind many of the city’s leading cultural institutions.
Mr. Allen also used his wealth to acquire the Portland Trail Blazers of the National Basketball Association in 1988 and the Seattle Seahawks of the National Football League in 1996.
When he bought the Trail Blazers, he promised to keep the franchise in the city, one of the smallest in the league. He often flew to games from Seattle and sat courtside with his mother. Soon after he bought the team, the Trail Blazers had one of their best runs in franchise history, making it to the NBA finals twice in three years, losing both times.
In the mid-1990s, the owner of Mr. Allen’s hometown Seahawks, Ken Behring, was considering moving the team to Los Angeles because he was unable to get public funding for a new stadium in Seattle. Mr. Allen was urged to step in to keep the team in Seattle. In 1996, he bought an exclusive option to purchase the team from Mr. Behring by July, 1997, an option he ultimately exercised, buying the team for US$194-million.
Mr. Allen set about building the team a new home downtown. The team moved into CenturyLink Field in 2002, and Mr. Allen spent hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade the stadium. Although he spoke infrequently to the media, he could often be seen at games. During his tenure, the Seahawks made their only three Super Bowl appearances, winning the title once, in 2014.
One of Mr. Allen’s companies also owned a stake in the Seattle Sounders, one of the most successful franchises in Major League Soccer. The Sounders won the league title in 2016.
Paul Gardner Allen was born in Seattle on Jan. 21, 1953, to Kenneth and Edna (Faye) Allen. His father was a librarian; his mother a school teacher. He leaves his sister, Jody Allen.