There are few people who can silence a crowd by the mere anticipation of their entrance.
The world’s richest man is one such person.
As 4 p.m. arrived Wednesday and his handlers’ actions made it clear that Bill Gates was about to enter Auditorium AB20 at UW-Madison’s Weeks Hall, a buzzing crowd of about 200 computer and biological sciences students and a dozen or so media types almost instantly went silent.