Gates, cofounder of Microsoft, is being recognized both for his contributions in the computer world and for his more recent passions, enabled by his prodigious wealth: fighting disease in developing nations and improving education in low-income areas of the United States.
First bestowed in 1824, the awards are among the nation's oldest honors in science and technology. Recipients include Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, and four of this year's Nobel Prize winners. The latest group of Franklin Institute laureates will come to Philadelphia for a week of seminars and ceremony in April.
The story of the highest-profile winner is well-known. He dropped out of Harvard in 1975 to create the now-omnipresent software giant, and currently devotes most of his time to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. With the motto "All Lives Have Equal Value," it is the world's largest philanthropic organization, funded initially with Gates' own money and now also with contributions from his investor friend Warren Buffett.
Scholars are only beginning to measure the foundation's impact on global health and education. Much of the cutting-edge research that it supports will not bear fruit for years. Perhaps inevitably, given the large sums in question, some critics quibble with how the money is being spent.
Yet it is hard to dispute that the foundation has made serious commitments to its goals:
$1.5 billion to the GAVI Alliance, a global health partnership whose vaccination program has prevented an estimated 3.4 million deaths since 2000.
$1.37 billion to the United Negro College Fund.
$456 million for a malaria vaccine initiative, in partnership with GlaxoSmithKline.
$264.5 million toward improving seeds and soil for African farmers.
Early on, some worried that the torrent of money for these causes would induce other donors to hold back. But the opposite has been true, said Joe Cohen, coinventor of Glaxo's malaria vaccine, which is in trials and has shown early promise.
