Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates will receive an honorary degree from Harvard University after speaking at the University's 356th Commencement on June 7, 2007.

Gates' life is a classic American riches-to-even-more-riches story. Growing up the son of a successful Seattle-area attorney, he was a curious fusion of nerd and bad boy. He was a straight-arrow student, but it was never enough to be the best. He had to push everything a little too far — he wanted to win the game and break the rules at the same time to show he was even smarter than the guy who wrote the rules.

In high school, he and Allen, with whom Gates would later co-found Microsoft, were obsessed with programming a mainframe owned by a local company. But mastering it wasn't enough. "We did this thing where we proved you could steal the password file," Gates says. "Paul and I were banned from using the computer for a year."

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Bill Gates, Microsoft, Harvard University