Stanford Given $6 Million by Microsoft Chief

William H. Gates III, a Harvard dropout whose software empire has made him a billionaire six times over, has donated $6 million to Stanford University for a new information sciences building that will bear his name.

Gates’ gift, announced Wednesday, completes private funding for the $26.1-million facility, which is expected to be finished in 1995. It will be the university’s prime center for computer sciences.

Gates, 36, left undergraduate studies at Harvard University in 1975 to co-found Microsoft Corp. The company, based in the Seattle suburb of Redmond, is the world’s leading developer of personal computer software, with 12,000 employees and sales last year of $2.8 billion.

The most recent issue of Fortune magazine ranks Gates, who owns 30.5% of Microsoft’s stock, as the world’s 13th-richest person, with an estimated $5.9 billion.

Although he has no alumni connection to Stanford, Gates said he chose the university because of its research links with the company and because of the many breakthroughs that have occurred there. Last year, he gave $12 million to the University of Washington.

“I’m somebody who believes in education,” Gates said in a telephone interview. “We hire more people from California than (from) any other state.”