Bill Gates' Harvard Professor: 'I Wasn't Surprised When He Dropped Out—But I Wish I'd Invested in Him'—$100 Could Be $650,000 Today

Bill Gates didn't stick around Harvard for long—he dropped out after three semesters to start Microsoft MSFT in 1975. But he was there just long enough to leave a lasting impression. 

One of Gates' former professors, applied mathematics expert Harry Lewis, remembers him as inquisitive and "mature" beyond his years. According to Lewis, Gates had a habit of questioning authority and tackling tough problems. 

"He always wanted a challenge," Lewis, who has been teaching at Harvard since the 1970s, told The Times of London recently. "I wasn't surprised when he dropped out—I just wish I'd invested in him." 

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Gates left Harvard to launch Microsoft at a time when software was still an emerging industry. The move paid off—he became a billionaire by 31. Today, Microsoft is worth nearly $3.2 trillion, and Gates has an estimated net worth of $108.7 billion, according to Forbes. 

If Lewis had put just $100 into Microsoft when it went public in 1986, that investment would be worth about $650,000 today, based on price appreciation and dividends, reflecting the monumental impact of his contributions to the technology sector. 

As a student, Gates quickly realized he wasn't always the smartest person in the room. He told The Times that being surrounded by students with stronger math skills was a wake-up call. Determined to keep up, he overloaded his schedule with extra classes while spending hundreds of hours writing software in Harvard's computer lab. 

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"It was, ‘Oh s—, there may be people better than me at math,'" he recalled. His memoir, Source Code, which covers his early years before Microsoft, was just released. 

Despite his self-doubt, Gates clearly had a talent for problem-solving. According to Lewis, he could have pursued a career in mathematics "if he wanted to." One moment that stood out was when Lewis introduced his class to the "pancake problem," a complex sorting puzzle. Just two days later, Gates returned with a better solution. 

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That solution was later published in a 1979 academic paper and remained the standard for nearly 30 years. It wasn't until 2008 that researchers finally improved on his method. Ironically, they were only able to do so with the help of computers—an industry Gates helped build. 

"They never could have actually done the case analysis were it not for the computer industry that Bill Gates built in the intervening 30 years," Lewis told NPR.

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