Dennis Austin, co-creator of Microsoft's PowerPoint software, has passed away. Dennis Austin was battling lung cancer for a long time. He was 76 years old. In 1984, Austin was hired by Forethought after being laid off by a start-up producing direct battery-powered laptops.

Forethought was founded by two former Apple employees. Austin played a key role in the creation of PowerPoint after Microsoft acquired Forethought in 1987. He retired from Microsoft in 1996. Austin was born on May 28, 1947 in Pittsburgh. He studied engineering at the University of Virginia.

By 1993, Microsoft's earnings from PowerPoint exceeded $100 million. Microsoft later integrated PowerPoint with its Office suite. Between 1985–96, Austin played a key role in the early development of PowerPoint.

It was Austin's job as a software engineer to make PowerPoint easier to operate during his tenure. PowerPoint was created to improve presentations and is still used for presentations today.

Austin has also written a book named “Sweating Bullets: Notes about Inventing PowerPoint”. This book was released in 2012. According to a report, today 30 million i.e. 3 crore presentations are prepared every day through PowerPoint.