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Microsoft's Charles Simonyi to be 1st Nerd in Space

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the flying-high dept.

Richard L. James writes "The BBC are reporting that Hungarian-born Charles Simonyi, a 58-year old Microsoft billionaire software engineer is set to become the first 'nerd in space' on board the Soyuz TMA-10 when the spacecraft launches on Thursday 09th March 2007. Charles oversaw the development of Multiplan, Word, and Excel among many other achievements. He has launched a website detailing the 3 goals he wishes to achieve on the trip: advance civilian spaceflight, assist space station research, and involve kids in space sciences. Jó szerencse pölö Charles!"

3 of 234 comments (clear)

  1. Yuri Gagarin by Airconditioning · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Wouldn't he qualify as first geek in space? I mean, the Russians didn't send a painter up did they?

  2. FYI by Geoffreyerffoeg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Charles Simonyi is the Hungarian in Hungarian notation (you know, m_lpszUsrTxt and the like).

    To be entirely fair to him, it wasn't intended to make variable names inscrutable, it applied to a language with weak type checking and few real types, and it still has valid uses today if you use it to mark information about the type of data instead of the "type" of variable.

  3. Re:science nerd by Protonk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No, this is the guy who donated enough money to have a tenured position named after him. The real prevailing factors here are money and some sufficient amount of respectability--Oxford wasn't waiting around for Ghandi, but the chair wasn't to be named after Pauli Shore.