Paul Allen

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Paul Allen (2013)

Paul Gardner Allen (born January 21, 1953 in Seattle , Washington ; † October 15, 2018 there ) was an American entrepreneur. Together with Bill Gates he founded the software company Microsoft and was with him on the board from 1975 to 1983. After that, he worked mainly as a businessman, art collector and team owner in North American professional sports.

On the 2015 list of the world's richest people published by business magazine Forbes , he was ranked 51st with a fortune of $ 17.5 billion. He was considered the visionary of the "networked world".

Life

youth

Paul Gardner Allen was born in Seattle in 1953 to Kenneth S. Allen, an assistant director of the University of Washington Library , and Faye G. Allen. He attended Lakeside School, a prestigious private school, and befriended Bill Gates , two years his junior , with whom he shared his enthusiasm for computers. Together, they took control of the Lakeside School's only minicomputer. In search of more computing power, they snuck into the computer labs at the University of Washington. They were caught but were able to reach an agreement with the administration of the laboratory by giving free help to students in using computers.

After graduating from high school, Allen studied at Washington State University , but left after two years to write commercial software for the new personal computers . During this time he founded his first company with Gates, with which they developed software for traffic counting. In 1973 he started working for Honeywell as a programmer. He later convinced Gates to leave Harvard University to start a company with him.

Microsoft

With Gates he founded in 1975 in Albuquerque , the company Microsoft and started a BASIC - interpreter to sell. In 1980 he was largely responsible for Microsoft 's ability to buy the 86-DOS operating system for $ 50,000 . Then Microsoft received a contract to supply 86-DOS as the operating system for the new IBM PC. This became the foundation for Microsoft's growth.

Allen left Microsoft in 1983 after being diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma . In November 2000, Allen resigned from his position on Microsoft's board of directors, but was asked to continue serving as a strategic advisor to Microsoft.

In August 2010, Paul Allen filed lawsuits against Google , Apple , Yahoo , Facebook , Ebay, and other software vendors through his Interval Licensing company , accusing them of using user interface technologies for which he owns the patents . No such lawsuit has been filed against Microsoft. In 2014, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit dismissed the lawsuit for infringement of patents for pop-up messages , after a judge from the US District Court had already denied it.

Other companies

Allen was involved in around 140 companies in the ICT industry. His vision was to merge computers, home entertainment, television and the Internet. To do this, he bought satellite television providers, cable network companies and the start-up Metricom, which wanted to cover large US cities with a wireless network. According to The Wall Street Journal , he bought several radio licenses through his companies in 2002 and 2003. At the end of January 2008, the investment company Vulcan Ventures, which was founded in 1986, is said to have bid at the auction for US broadband frequencies.

In 2004, Allen confirmed that he was the sole investor in the SpaceShipOne . It is an experimental aircraft for commercial suborbital space flight . SpaceShipOne was the first privately financed suborbital space flight. The project thus won the Ansari X-Prize , which was specially awarded for this purpose .

At the end of 2011, Allen announced that he wanted to build the largest aircraft in the world to date with a wingspan of 116 meters through his new company Stratolaunch Systems . The plan is to launch multi-stage rockets in the air by air.

Allen died in October 2018 at the age of 65 from complications from Hodgkin's lymphoma .

Engagements

Social area

Paul Allen was very involved financially in medical as well as scientific and technological work. To this end, he established the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation in 1986 . This administers the majority of Allen's donations. Through the foundation, he donated nearly $ 30 million annually, the majority (approximately 75 percent of the total) to charitable organizations in Seattle and Washington State . The remaining 25 percent is spread across organizations in Portland and other cities in the northwestern United States.

The University of Washington has received extensive financial support from everyone for many years. In the late 1980s, he donated $ 18 million to build a library that was then named after his father, Kenneth S. Allen. In 2003, he donated an additional US $ 5 million to a visual arts center named after his mother, Faye G. Allen. He was also the largest private sponsor and namesake of the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering . Allen contributed $ 14 million to the construction of this center, which was completed in 2004. Most recently, he donated US $ 3.2 million to the University of Washington Hospital for research into prostate diseases .

In 1993, Allen funded a two-year lawsuit in which the family of rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix regained the rights to his music. These rights were allegedly previously sold by the estate administrator without permission. Allen also funded the purchase of various items from Hendrix's personal belongings (including the guitar Hendrix played at the Woodstock Festival ). These objects were then made publicly accessible in the context of exhibitions of the Experience Music project.

Allen also contributed to the costs of various charitable projects such as SETI and Experience Music Project, as well as the Allen Institute for Brain Research, which he founded in 2003 with his sister Jody Allen Patton. Since September 2006 this institute has made the Allen Brain Atlas available on the Internet, a kind of virtual map of a mouse brain. Estimates of his total charitable giving in 2005 are approximately $ 815 million.

The Flying Heritage Collection , which he financed, has existed since 2004 , now known as the Flying Heritage & Combat Armor Museum , which has restored some airplanes, mostly from the Second World War and the Cold War, and made them accessible to the public. The aircraft were initially in Arlington , later in Paine Field and a selection are still regularly demonstrated on flight days.

In July 2010, he joined billionaires Bill Gates and Warren Buffett's philanthropic campaign The Giving Pledge and pledged to donate more than half of his fortune. In 2011, Allen was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Tracking down shipwrecks

Paul Allen was involved in the search for the lost wreckage of sunken ships. On March 17, 2018, his team found the wreck of the light cruiser USS Juneau, which was sunk in 1942 . On March 6, 2018, the aircraft carrier USS Lexington was discovered, which sank in the Battle of the Coral Sea on May 8, 1942 . Previously, on August 19, 2017, he announced the discovery of the cruiser USS Indianapolis , which sank in the North Pacific in July 1945 and which his team had tracked down at a depth of 5500 m. The find was made from the converted research vessel Petrel . In previous years, expeditions led by Allen had found the Japanese battleship Musashi (March 2015) and the Italian destroyer Artigliere (March 2017) from the Second World War. The begun yet through it looking for the sunken on 27 October 1942 USS Hornet continued after Allen's death and could by the team of Petrel in January 2019 with the discovery of the wreck in about 5,400 meters depth near the Solomon Islands successfully be .

Art collection

Édouard Manet:
Grand Canal in Venice
from the Paul G. Allen collection

In 2006, Allen showed a selection of 28 paintings from his private art collection to the public for the first time. In the Experience Music Project built by Frank Gehry in Seattle, he exhibited works by Herbert Bayer , Jan Brueghel the Younger , Giovanni Antonio Canal , Paul Cézanne , Willem de Kooning , Edgar Degas , Max Ernst , Eric under the title DoubleTake: From Monet to Lichtenstein Fischl , Paul Gauguin , Nan Goldin , Jasper Johns , Roy Lichtenstein , Édouard Manet , Claude Monet , Pablo Picasso , Pierre-Auguste Renoir , Gerhard Richter , Mark Rothko , Georges Seurat , Paul Signac , Thomas Struth , William Turner , Vincent van Gogh and Kenji Yanobe out.

Participation in sports clubs

Allen owned the US professional sports teams Seattle Seahawks ( NFL ) and Portland Trail Blazers ( NBA ). He was also a partner in the Seattle Sounders ( MLS ) soccer franchise .

Portland Trail Blazers

In 1988, Allen bought the Portland Trail Blazers , a basketball team from the American professional league, NBA, for $ 70 million . He was a central figure in the planning and financing of the team's venue, the Rose Garden Arena, which was built in 1995 and renamed Moda Center in 2013 . Since the association was, according to Allen's information, in financial difficulties and, according to his estimates, would lose about 100 million US dollars over the next three years, Allen approached those responsible for the city of Portland and the state of Oregon in spring 2006 and asked them for support for the team. The mayor of Portland, Tom Potter, rejected this request, citing the city's tight financial situation. Trail Blazers fans accused everyone of having been partly responsible for the team’s deterioration in performance and for their declining reputation in professional circles since 1996.

Seattle Seahawks

In 1997, Allen acquired the Seattle Seahawks American football team . The city of Seattle asked for help after previous owner Ken Behring wanted the team to move to California. The Seahawks' new stadium, CenturyLink Field , was largely taxpayer-funded, but Allen was one of the driving forces behind the planning.

Yachts

The octopus off the coast of southern France
The tatoosh in Valletta harbor, Malta

In 2003, Allen's yacht Octopus was put into operation. Built as a joint effort by Lürssen in Bremen and Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft in Kiel , with a length of 126.20 meters, its own submarine and several dinghies, it was one of the ten largest yachts in the world at the time.
Allen owned two other yachts, including the 92-meter-long Tatoosh that was built by the Nobiskrug shipyard in Rendsburg . In mid-January 2016, over 1300 m² of the reef of West Bay off the Cayman Islands was said to have been destroyed with her anchor chain .

Fonts (selection)

  • Idea Man: A Memoir by the Cofounder of Microsoft. Portfolio / Penguin, 2011, ISBN 978-1-59184-382-5 . - German edition: Idea Man. The autobiography of the Microsoft co-founder . Frankfurt / New York: Campus Verlag, 2011, ISBN 978-3-593-39539-5 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Christine Wang: Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen dies of cancer at age 65. CNBC, October 15, 2018, accessed on October 16, 2018 (American English): “Microsoft Co-Founder Paul Allen died from complications of non- Hodgkin's lymphoma on Monday afternoon. Allen's Vulcan Inc. announced that he died in Seattle at 65 years old. "
  2. ^ The World's Billionaires. Forbes Magazine , accessed August 27, 2015 .
  3. ↑ Patent law: Microsoft founder Allen sues Internet giants. In: Spiegel Online . August 28, 2010, accessed February 16, 2013 .
  4. ^ Court revives Paul Allen's patent suit against AOL, Google, Apple, Yahoo , September 10, 2014
  5. ↑ Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen: Giant aircraft planned as launch pad for spacecraft. In: Stern.de . December 14, 2011, accessed October 16, 2018 .
  6. ↑ Flying Heritage & Combat Armor Museum ( Memento from October 23, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
  7. ↑ Brief introduction on flyingheritage.org (English)
  8. ^ Statement by Paul G. Allen. (PDF, 30.4 KB) In: The Giving Pledge . July 15, 2010, accessed February 16, 2013 .
  9. ^ Eleanor Ainge Roy: "USS Juneau, warship that sank with 600 aboard, discovered 4 km down in Pacific" The Guardian of March 20, 2018
  10. ↑ Wreckage From USS Indianapolis Located In Philippine Sea paulallen.com, August 19, 2017, accessed August 20, 2017.
  11. ↑ Wreck of "USS Indianapolis" discovered after 72 years orf.at, August 20, 2017, accessed August 20, 2017.
  12. ↑ "Lost for 77 years: now wreckage of legendary US aircraft carrier has been found" Focus.de of February 13, 2019
  13. ↑ Stefan Koldehoff: Art from Tanker Billions, Embiricos Erbe , FAZ.net October 5, 2012, last accessed January 30, 2016.
  14. ↑ Portland Trail Blazers , forbes.com, 32/2010
  15. ↑ Trailblazers rename the Rose Garden the Moda Center in a sign of changing times Oregon Live, August 13, 2013
  16. ↑ Hal Bernton: Allen's Trail Blazers Seek Help to Stay in Portland , The Seattle Times , 25 February 2006
  17. ↑ Celebrity yacht ruins coral reef: Windows 95 navigation? , orf.at, January 29, 2016, accessed January 30, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Allen, Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Allen, Paul G .; Allen, Paul Gardner (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH January 21, 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH Seattle , Washington , United States
DATE OF DEATH 15th October 2018
Place of death Seattle , Washington , United States