Co-founding Microsoft ultimately made Paul Allen, who has died of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma aged 65, one of the world’s richest men. But while he could buy anything he wanted – yachts, famous paintings, sports clubs – he lived with the threat of recurring cancer. His illness – initially diagnosed as Hodgkin’s lymphoma – was first treated with radiation therapy and a bone marrow transplant in 1982, and caused him to leave Microsoft the following year. He said: “It makes you that much more focused on realising your dreams and hopes, because all of our times on this planet are limited.”
Allen will mainly be remembered for his association with Bill Gates, which started at Lakeside, a private school in Seattle. In 1968 the school’s mothers’ association funded the purchase of a Teletype ASR-33 text terminal to a remote General Electric GE-635 mainframe, and a small group of boys became fanatical users. As Allen wrote in his memoir Idea Man (2011): “I had discovered my calling. I was a programmer.”
