Warren Buffett was born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1930, studied under Benjamin Graham at Columbia Business School and acquired control of a failing textile mill called Berkshire Hathaway in 1965. Over the following six decades he and his late partner Charlie Munger turned that shell into a holding company spanning insurance, railroads, energy, consumer goods, industrial manufacturing and one of the largest public-equity portfolios in the world.
The institution he built is now treated as a reference point for governance, capital allocation and succession discipline. The annual shareholder meetings in Omaha have become a global event, and Buffett's letters to shareholders have been studied as a sustained literature on the discipline of long-horizon investing.
He has pledged the overwhelming majority of his personal wealth to philanthropy, primarily through the Gates Foundation and his own children's foundations, and has been instrumental in establishing the Giving Pledge, a public commitment to charitable giving signed by hundreds of the world's wealthiest individuals.