In the spotlight: Bill Gates

He also granted $440,000 (zł.1.39 million) to three educational and social programs to be carried out in the country.

Those two initiatives symbolize Gates' two sides - that of a successful businessman and world's richest person, and that of a philanthropist. Widely recognized as the world's richest individual, his net worth was estimated at $46.5 (zł.147.5) billion in 2005, Gates has come a long way since dropping out of Harvard and establishing Microsoft as a 20 year-old in 1975. A lucrative contract in the early 1980s catapulted the company into the business "premier league" and gave it a virtual monopoly in the operational-software market.

Apart from Microsoft and its flagship product Windows, there is a second side to Gates which is starting to get more recognition. The Microsoft chairman, together with his wife Melinda and U2 vocalist Bono, were named by Time Magazine as persons of the year in 2005 for their  charity work. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, with an endowment of approximately $28 (zł.88.8) billion in 2005, is the world's largest charitable foundation. It mainly provides funds for scholarships and programs for fighting AIDS and disease, especially in the Third World. In January, Gates pledged to donate $900 million (zł.2.8 billion) to fight tuberculosis.