Bill Gates co-authored the following paper in the 1970s with Christos Papadimitriou:
"Bounds for sorting by prefix reversal," Discrete Mathematics 27 (1979), no. 1, 47–57, MR0534952.
Not sure if Gates counts as an amateur, but he is at least a college dropout. :)
The only reason I know this is because once I ran across a book or article that discusses the results in this paper and then says something like, "Yes, this is THE Bill Gates." I was almost certain the book or article was by Knuth, but now I can't find the reference in any of my Knuth books. If someone else knows the reference I'm talking about, I would be grateful if they would post it as a comment to my answer. (It now bothers me that I can't find that reference. :) )
