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Top Ten Geek Girls
TurboPatrol writes "CNET have published a list of the Top Ten Girl Geeks throughout history. The winners include the elegant Ada Byron (the world's first computer programmer), Grace Hopper (invented the compiler) and Lisa Simpson (invented the perpetual motion machine — well, in the world of cartoons). Some of the entries are fascinating, for example Marie Curie apparently used to carry plutonium in her jacket pockets. Have they missed anyone out?" At least two entries on the list are stupid. I guess someone thought they were funny.
What about Leah Culver?
http://leahculver.com/
*hawtness*
Chums up, let's do this!
I'm glad to RTFA and see people like Eugenia or Steph the Geek not on the list, HOWEVER, wtf is Paris Hilton, LISA FSCKING SIMPSON, or Aleks Krotoski on the list? Did they run out at 6 or 7 geeks, and needed filler? Paris Hilton is described as "She might look trendy on the outside, but inside this girl is all binary." WTF?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Isn't it a little bit sad when one of the Top 10 geek "girls" throughout history has to be a cartoon character. Are there really that few women geeks to choose from?
Well I guess she does have a good publicist.
Plutonium was created in the 1940's. Marie Curie died in the 1930's.
What is interesting, in a disturbiung way, is that Marie Curies workbooks that she used while discovering radium are still considered dangerously radioactive.
After she was dead, presumably, as it was not discovered in her lifetime.
I'd have gone for Willow Rosenberg instead.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
And here I was thinking that you were going to link me to a page on "Librarian Fantasy" porn.
Ninjas use italics.
Forgot to add, here's a link to her Flickr acct:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/leahculver/
I'm not a stalker or nothin, just wanted to post that before I go back to hiding in the bushes with my binoculars.....
Chums up, let's do this!
is morgan webb?
wud
A woman invented COBOL? This does not surprise me. *ducks*
Hey! Maybe Paris can come over to my house and we can play games together.
I've got a great joystick.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines
Uh, hello? Fiorella Terenzi?
http://www.fiorella.com/fiorprofile.htm
What is interesting, in a disturbiung way, is that Marie Curies workbooks that she used while discovering radium are still considered dangerously radioactive.
Curiously, given this story, there is a similar story floating around about Paris Hilton, albeit not involving science workbooks.
It's a shame they missed her: http://web.media.mit.edu/~cynthiab/
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Are there really so few geek girls out there that they can't even make a TOP 10 list, and need to pad it out with Lisa Simpson and Paris "throw up in my face" Hilton ? How insulting can you get - if they really couldn't think of more than 8 real, live, girls, then even Trinity would have been a better choice.
...about the selections. I assume Paris Hilton is on the list just to be controversial and create a buzz. Daryl Hannah? Huh?
And to be kind, the "facts" about Grace Hopper can be disputed. Contrary to the layman's belief, she didn't invent COBOL. There is a dispute about whether she invented the compiler (there are many people who give credit to John Backus at IBM), and certainly she didn't discover the first "bug" nor did she popularize the term. Now Grace Hopper was brilliant, but I always got the feeling that the Navy made sure we knew about Adm. Hopper just because her story was so appealing to the public.
(Next thing you know, somebody will claim Henry Ford invented Mass Production, or that Columbus discovered the world was round).
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Ah, CNet. Just when one thought you couldn't get any less useful, you squander a potentially really neat article idea on tired Simpsons and Paris Hilton jokes. I hate to say this to anyone.. but you are really not funny.
A girl geek friend of mine works for CNet. I wonder how well her and her fellows are taking this.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Did I just see Madame Curie and Rosalind Franklin compared with Paris Hilton and Lisa Simpson? One two time Nobel Prize winner and another near Nobel Prize winner compared to a coke snorting self promoting gamer and a cartoon character.
I give up.
Seriously, Heddy Lamar helped develop the ideas behind spread spectrum that we use today.
Paris Hilton is the loveable hateable icon of absurdity. She should be on every list. Sexiest woman (#47 Paris Hilton), best actress in a foreign film (#23 Paris Hilton), world's strongest man (#97 Paris Hilton), most downloaded interent video star (#3 Paris Hilton), most likely running mate for Barak Obama (#2 Paris Hilton), and people who remind you of the Olsen Twins (#1 Paris Hilton).
We laugh today... but I wouldn't be surprised if Paris isn't the first female US president... and most likely will be the first president to put electrolytes in the water supply.
haha hahaha haha *snort*...
Emmy Noether?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lise_Meitner
how about Radia Perlman?
The fact that they had to include a fictional character, and Paris Hilton, shows you just how little women have ever accomplished in the realm of technology.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Paris Fucking Hilton?
PARIS FUCKING HILTON!?!?!?!
Aside from the cartoon this is a list of women with admirable intellectual
ability. And then they end the list with ***PARIS FUCKING HILTON****!?!?!?!
I havn't visited her old rooms (in the basement of the Sorbonne) myself, but I've met a few people who have. If you turn off all the lights, you can see the walls, glowing in the dark.
They had a big scare a few years ago, when they were auctioning off some old furniture. Turned out some of it dangerously radioactive.
http://geekbriefwp.podshow.com/
Now that's hot, Paris.
Plutonium was created in the 1940's. Marie Curie died in the 1930's.
Holy shit... are you saying Marie Curie could travel back in time!? WTF? OMG?!
No Bill Gates?
Come on, everyone who had the pleasure of hearing him scream with his high pitch voice knows better.
What a dumb number 1. Both figuratively and actually.
Can we replace Paris Hilton with Jerri Ellsworth, please?
Scottie Chapman and Kari Byron
YEAH YEAH YEAH BABAY!!!!!
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
smarty pants... its says "polonium" get off speed-reading
Is that plutonium in your pocket, Marie, or are you just happy to see me?
One of the ways to improve signal to noise is to cut down on the NOISE.
the article says she invented COBAL- thinking maybe there was something I didn't know, I googled around and found several other articles that say COBAL in one sentence and then COBOL in the next. Are all those articles typos, or is there a COBAL?
and her "frequency hopping"??
I can't believe not a single asian chick made that list.
I have my own personal asian geek girl. How many of you do also? Muhaha
She's given me "access" to her fun parts with chmod strings, can kick my ass in video games, and spends every waking moment in lab.
I found it interesting that Ada Lovelace was listed as the first programmer. I thought recently new notes were discovered that indicate Babbage had done most of that work himself and she was merely interested in the machine. When I looked at this issue a few months ago, Wikipedia's article indicated Ada Lovelace was not the first programmer. Then again its wikipedia...
Anyone know what the current consensus is on Lovelace as the first programmer? My wife was taught that she was in her CS program, but I was taught there were questions on it. (i started after her)
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
What "list of girls" on the internet would be complete without paris hilton.
God Be Gone
This may be the worst article I've ever seen on /.
The list is great! And all of them deserve being on it. This list itself is totally geeky.
LS and PH -- it's too bad they won't live! But then again, who does?
cb
Claiming to be pedantic on Slashdot is asking for trouble
She knows her way around Solaris and UNIX.
- Helen Duval
- Busty...
Wait Girl GeeksI hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
First of all, why isn't it 12? With 12, you can make a calendar. Then, you could get current geek girls to portray the original geek girls and make a mint off the geek market.
Second, Paris is not a geek. A shallow, stupid, waste of oxygen - yes. A geek - no.
The previous comment is purposely vague and generalized, but all of the facts are completely true.
I understand how the scientists on the list made it, but Paris Hilton, Lisa Simpson, Mary Shelly, and Daryl Hannah?
Eve Andersson?
Mena Trott?
Barbara Broccoli?
J.K. Rowling?
Zoe Lofgren?
This seems like so much of the usual CNet feature-story drivel....
MOO;IANAL.
There used to be a picture linked here.
It is certainly odd to see that Marie Curie got 8th while lisa got 7th...
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
She is the self-taught chip designer who created the C-64 in a joystick thingie.
Jeri Ellsworth Lectures about the C64 & C-One at Stanford Uni.
Summary says plutonium, story says polonium, though not specifically in relation to being carried in her pockets.
... "Curie used to walk around with her pockets stuffed full of test tubes containing radioactive isotopes."
Article:
That out of all the women in the world for geekyness they had a cartoon character and hilton ... [who's SIDEKICK was hacked, not blackberry].
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
What about Mae Ling Mak.....naked and petrified??????
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Hey, the girl might be fun for 15 minutes at a time about once a month as long as you have your weiner wrapped in five condoms held on with duct tape, but a geek or a friend to geeks? No way.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Kari Byron from MythBusters.
I want to know what the hell the author was smoking when this was written, beause that's some really potent stuff!
Why the f**k is Darryl Hannah on this list? She not a f**king geek! She's a left-wing, activist actress! Oh, wow, she made two board games. So what? That does not qualify her to bear the category of "geek" in any way, shape, or form.
Lisa Simpson? Paris Hilton? Others have discussed the stupidity of these entries, so I'm not going to bother reiterating them.
Why the hell are two of the most prominent girl geeks around not on this list -- Aluria Petrucci (aka Cali Lewis) and Amber McArthur? Cali Lewis is one of the most famous tech geeks out there with her GeekBrief.TV video podcast that gets tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of downloads every day. Even if she's just a nice-on-the-eyes presenter, she still has far more qualifications than Hanna, Simpson, or Hilton. And Amber McArthur is just about every geek's wet dream - intelligent (holds several college degrees), co-host and producer of several tech podcasts and TVs shows, host of commandN video podcast, clearly has a love for tech, and is incredibly easy on the eyes.
I certainly can agree with Marie Curie, Ada Byron, and the others. I'll even give the nod to Mary Shelley. But some of the entires in this list completely destroy the credibility of whoever the person is who made this list.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
Well she had to get plutonium back to herself somehow. I'm sure in 1985 you can get plutonium at your local conrer store but in the 1930's it's a bit harder to come by.
though the graphic by #8 does say plutonium.. missed that.
Sophie Germain was quite the math geek - even has a type of prime number named after her. Had to use a psedonym because women weren't supposed to be mathematicians back then. Clearly the folks who wrote the article didn't do any real research.
Grace Hopper recieived an honorary degree and spoke at my college graduation (Syracuse U. '86) - truly an amazing person. But, the whole "She invented the computer bug" story is part myth - the moth was discoved in the computer, true, and they called it the "First actual omputer bug" but they said that as a joke - the expression of calling a defect a "Bug" was in use prior to that.
I couldn't believe she wasn't on the list, lollipop shaped addressing looses out to Paris Hilton because she plays video games? WTF?
They forgot the #1 Geek Girl! Kevin Rose!> Look at this: Kevin Rose on cover of People Magazine
For Lynn Conway. Working your way to the top of computer and chip design, twice, deserves some mention.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Conway
It is pretty sad that in order to make a list of 10 geek women they had to include one cartoon character (Simpson) and one slut (Hilton).
I'm surprised they missed this one. I mean, BSD is pretty geeky. http://www.uberg33k.com/gallery/view_album.php?set _albumName=bsdgirl-large
Warning: probably not work safe, depending on where you work.
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
It was probably Polonium and not Plutonium. However since she did work with pitchblend there where possibly trace amounts of plutonium in some of her samples but none that really amounted to anything. As far as the Geek girl list goes yea Paris Hilton should be booted. Isn't her 15 minutes of fame over yet? They missed one of my all time favorites Hedy Lamarr. She invented spread spectrum radio. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I can't believe that they omitted Emmy Noether, one of my role models and possibly, IMO, the greatest geek girl of all time.
Despite the incredible sexism and rise of the nazi rule that she faced during her day, she was brilliantly accomplished, contributing huge amounts to the fields of commutative algebra and theoretical physics.
...the gamer chick? She used to be on a TERRIBLE uk games show full of fake GRRRL POWER called "Bits". Or as some wags would have it, "Bints".
1. Babbage never built his difference engine, so how could Lovelace write programs for it? I would suggest that who ever wrote the first patterns for the Jacquard Loom" deserves more credit than she.
2. While Grace Hopper (who I met twice) was been frequently accused of fluffing her own legend, and enjoyed telling the story of the "first computer bug", she never claimed to have found the moth that got caught in the Mark II - the machine operators did, and taped it to the operations log.
3. I'm sorry but Curie could not have possibly carried plutonium in her pockets, since she died in 1934 and plutonium wasn't discovered until 1941.
4. Darryl Hannah?!? Paris Hilton?!? What about Sally Ride? Judith Resnick or any of the other female astronauts?
Clear, Dark Skies
>> Plutonium was created in the 1940's.
North America was created in 1492.
...Hedy Lamar? She looks infintely hotter than the real geek girls on that paltry list and she was responsible for co-inventing Frequency-hopped spread spectrum technology used in WiFi today...
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
She'd be my number one!
Adele Goldberg delveloped Smalltalk at Xerox PARC. Seminal GUI and OO programming system. Probably fits in there somewhere between Daryl Hannah and Paris Hilton.
True but it's the summary is wrong so if you RTFA it was actually Polonium and Radium she discovered ...
was been? Heh.
Clear, Dark Skies
Ok, Simpson is fictional, but I'll buy into it. But Paris Hilton? I DON'T THINK SO!
This writer is really confused!
I take no responsibility for what I say. Even though I'm never wrong
Paris Hilton and Daryl Hannah! That's a big "LOL" good buddy!
I don't think this article does much to dispel the notion that female geeks are as rare as attractive Slashdotters. Would you consider Patrick Stewart a geek just because he was in ST:TNG and "Dune"?Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
WTF does Hilton Barbie have too do with geeks (except maybe her intelligence can be counted in 8 bits)
I have a hunch where the 1 gets inserted
If she was a normal woman that would be a foregone conclusion but with Paris Hilton there are several possible points of entry.
how about Lise Meitner. However, the perpetual motion machine probably beats out the discovery of nuclear fission.
Sheesh. If they are going to use a cartoon character, they could have at least used Gadget Hackwrench instead, who made neat things that are at least plausible ;-)
You read descriptions of what she and her husband would do with samples of radium and you want to cry. They had no idea what they were doing to themselves.
Clear, Dark Skies
That list is useless. How can any 'Geek Girl' list not have Jeri Ellsworth? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeri_Ellsworth
Some notable picks, but the others, whose obvious names I won't point out, are just an insult to women I would think. I look at the list and think "so, women, want to be smart and sucessful, don't read, just put on makeup and shop, than you'll be number one geek girl and respected". I have some rather crude words for this article that I won't bother repeating, but sure was disappointed, I jumped on the link thinking I would see a cool list and I like smart geeky girls, but that list was flatter than Hilton's chest.
Plutonium is generally created synthetically by bombarding Uranium 238 with neutrons.
How dare they have Marie Curie 8th and even below a Cartoon Character and so close to Paris Hilton Da' Skank (wtf is she doing here in any case.)
SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!
I am utterly disgusted.
Two Nobel prizes in different faculties FCOL! She should have been one or two... heck I would call her the archetype of a perfect woman.
1. Cooking
2. Cleaning
3. Fruit of the womb
4. Shut the hell up
This list is an insult.
...she's not germane!
:)
Tish-boom, thanks, I'm here all week.
You're right, though. She was brilliant.
Oh, and there's a 'Reply' button right on top of the very first comment, underneath the 'I am willing to help test Slashdot's New Discussion System.' banner.
"Good news, everyone!"
Inventor of the Commodore-64-in-a-joystick
Marie Curie but no Emmy Noether?
Pshaw.
I am a navy seal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radia_Perlman
Spanning Tree algorithm...she even wrote a poem about it- and she is not a top ten geek girl? And Paris Hilton is? You sure this list isn't the top ten Greek (screwing) girls?
I think this list is meant more for entertainment than fact- even if it is just someone's opinion.
Repant. Thy end is sheer.
CNet really dropped the ball here. Goldie Hawn has had enough plastic surgery that she is now considered by leading scientists to be the first true cyborg.
Always find a way to include Paris Hilton. Always. No matter what the list is about. The Pro-Paris lobby sees it as a validation of her celebrity. The Anti-Paris lobby sees it as an affront to their interest. Discussions get heated. Threads grow. Eventually it ends up on "/." or "that other place." Win-win for the list maker.
It is as bad as you think and they really are out to get you.
Whereas Paris Hilton has developed the idea of the SPREAD spectrum along slightly different lines?
Roberta Williams belongs on this list. Married to the brash and brilliant programmer and founder of Sierra On-Line, Ken Williams, the mousey Roberta wrote fantastical good-natured interactive tales in the form of text adventures. In the company's infancy she also "manned" the only customer support phone, and took great delight in hearing direct praise and personally coaching players through her games without giving direct hints. She later went on to author the Kings Quest series which won countless critical and commercial accolades.
Her games challenged the technologies of the day, with Kings Quest V being the company's first entirely mouse-driven adventure title, and Phantasmagoria being the first adventure game exclusively portraying filmed actors and locations. Despite her mild manner and reserved tongue, Phantasmagoria broke ground as one of the first wide-release PC games unabashedly targeted at mature audiences with scenes of graphic gore and even an infamous rape scene.
Perhaps most important of all, Roberta Williams wrote games for people - not specifically men or women - who enjoyed a good story with strong characters. She is remarkable for excelling in a mostly male-dominated industry without having to resort to the image of "PC game princess".
The list is an insult to women, and in particular geek women.
Having filler like Lisa Simpson is bad enough, but Paris Hilton?
If the list were of the top 10 men, would it include Dilbert and some-random-male-gameplaying-celebrity?
Honestly, there are lots of girl geeks (a lot have been mentioned in other posts, I'd like to add Jeri Ellsworth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeri_Ellsworth)) that would far better fit the list.
The only thing this list proves, it the author's inaptitude as a journalist.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Well, yes I was. I'm a geek. What can I say?
On the other hand, I did know about her previously, because of her robot "Kismet". The PBS show just brought her to the front of my mind.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
I think the article must be a joke. If they'd been even remotely serious, they might have found:
- Marie Curie, as has already been mentioned here. She is credited not with discovering plutonium but with discovering radium and with promoting, among other things, its medical uses--so she's also a pioneer in the field of radiology. Might've been nice to see at least a brief nod in her direction.
- Hypatia of Alexandria. More about her here. A mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher, she was actually martyred for her geekdom by the local contingent of fundamentalist Christians while they were destroying the library at Alexandria.
- How about a group nod to the women "computors" of World War II? Their presence and skills permitted the male geeks to (I suppose) go off and do actual fighting. These jobs were the first real opportunity for women to exercise their math skills at something besides bookkeeping.
- There's a pretty interesting exhibit at the Cryptology Museum about women cryptologists and cryptanalysts.
It would be interesting to compile a non-joking list.
"Here's what's happening. You're starting to drive like your Dad..." - Red Green
After all, she really pushed technology forward helping with the adoption of VHS.
Dang-da-dang, da-dang-da-dang, da-dang-da-dang, da-dang-dang-da-da... (repeat). One hot crazy geek.
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
Really? If you accelerate plutonium to 88 miles/hour and hit it with lightning, it goes back in time by itself, flux capacitor or no.
Radia Perlmann. Gave us spanning tree and much excellent original work on routing. Cool woman (not not, I think, 'girl')... Joanna Rutkowska - the blue pill rootkit queen.
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
Saying your "phone ran out of batteries" is like saying your "car ran out of gas tanks".
What?!?! no Asia Carrera?!?!?
Yeah, I thought the same thing when reading the summary.
the article actually says
I had to read that a couple times because I kept seeing "plutonium" and ended up going to wikipedia to make sure it wasn't.
Also called Radium F, polonium was discovered by Maria Skodowska-Curie and her husband Pierre Curie in 1898 and was later named after Marie's home land of Poland (Latin: Polonia).
Plutonium was first produced and isolated on February 23, 1941 by Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg, Dr. Michael Cefola, Edwin M. McMillan, J. W. Kennedy, and A. C. Wahl by deuteron bombardment of uranium in the 60-inch cyclotron at Berkeley.
So no, Marie Curie would have died a lot sooner had she carried plutonium around. As it happened, what she did carry around killed her by 1934.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
I know CNet won't be on it.
Seriously, Paris Hilton??? And Penny, Inspector Gadget's niece, beats Lisa Simpson, if there really are no other real female geeks in the world -- say, a female space tourist, for example.
Stupid list.
Back when computation and observational astronomy were considered "women's work," Henrietta Swan Leavitt discovered the standard candle which lets us judge the distance of galaxies. At the time, many believed that the other galaxies were just nebulae.
She expanded our universe from a large number of stars, to an enormous multigalactic system.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Leavitt
They had to pick just ten geek girls, and one isn't even real?! Come on... that's just pathetic...
You know who they should have had on the list as a top 10 geek girl? Me. :-P
Lise Meitner
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meitner
Co-discoverer of Atomic Fission
Barbara McClintock
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_McClintock
Discoverer of mobile genetic elements
These two were towering figures in science, probably behind only Curie in importance, and vastly underappreciated for a very long time -in no small measure do to their gender. McClintock finally did get the Nobel after decades of obscurity and Meitner was eventually honored with the naming of the element, Meitnerium. These are amazing stories that -speaking as a scientist and geek myself- I think any self-respecting science geek really should know.
While you are at it, where is Regina Lynn?
Helping geeks get laid everywhere!
Considering that Plutonium is not a naturally occurring elements (except in freak cases of naturally-occurring fission), pitchblende should not have any plutonium.
For those who have seen the movie (or play) Proof, you might recall that they mention Sophie Germain, after whom a class of prime numbers is named. However, I'd vote for Emmy Noether as the best female mathematician/geek. Einstein said she was "the most significant creative genius thus far produced since the higher education of women began." [1]. She developed an entire branch of mathematics, and had a genuine following; many of her students turned out to be important mathematicians in the next generation.
[1] As quoted in Gallian's Contemporary Abstract Algebra
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/esa2/author.html
AEleen Frisch, yo. Mad pr0pz.
Kyle Hodgson Systems Geek
She was originally married to a German weapons supplier. Consequently, she knew about things like tanks and torpedoes.
Came up with what we now call frequency-hopping spread spectrum technology, trying to make a torpedo which could be directed after launch, but couldn't be jammed.
Reasonably good actress. Brainy as all hell. Drop-dead gorgeous.
Now THERE'S a Geek Girl rolemodel who simply needs better publicity.
... by the Dew of Mountains the thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shakes, the shakes become a warning
We only know that radioaktivity is dangerous since she died of cancer.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
it was RADIUM that marie curie carried in her pockets... ampoules of radium.
there was no plutonium until about 1939, it's a transuranic element.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Jean Sammet created FORMAC, was on the committee that created COBOL (which was a considerable advance at the time), and wrote a monumental book/taxonomy of programming languages that is of great historical value. She deserves to be on the list.
"Flamebait"? There must be some Darryl Hanna fans on Slashdot with mod points to abuse, because the article itself is spot-on.
I would also add many that have already been added, but it would probably just be easier to provide this link to a number of women scientists and mathemeticians. It might not be definitive, but many of the women listed in the replies here are also listed there as well.
Ditch Paris Hilton and get Asia Carrera on there. At least she's actuallyy a geek!
Miss Pac-Man ! She's the very first pixel girl geek in videogames, isn't she ? ;)
-- Rastignac was here.
This girl leart the program the Commodore 64, when she was 7. Later designed the C64 core that runs in the C-One, and went on to design the chips that go into the C64DTV (commodore 64 joystick). And she's Hot!.
My vote is for Bonnie Burton... for a long time she has been the forefront of geek-chick culture. http://www.grrl.com/
I was guessing that Kari Byron of Mythbusters fame would be on that list somewhere, given how popular she is with the lads, but apparently not. And then there's Scottie, the machinist/welder from that show. A chick with a Mig welder... (wait for it) now that's hot.
And it's all in the name of science, of course. (ducks)
I've always admired Rosalind Franklin, the oft-overlooked molecular biologist who did much of the actual science (intricate lab work) that led to the discovery of the structure of DNA. She died at a young age (37)in 1958 and thus did not share in the nobel prize that was awarded to Watson and Crick in the 1960s. From accessexcellence.org (http://www.accessexcellence.org/RC/AB/BC/Rosalind _Franklin.html) we have:
"After discovering the existence of the A and B forms of DNA, Rosalind Franklin also succeeded in developing an ingenious and laborious method to separate the two forms, providing the first DNA crystals pure enough to yield interpretable diffraction patterns. She then went on to obtain excellent X-ray diffraction patterns of crystalline B-form DNA and, using a combination of crystallographic theory and chemical reasoning, discovered important basic facts about its structure. She discovered that the sugar-phosphate backbone of DNA lies on the outside of the molecule, not the inside as was previously thought. She discovered the helical structure of DNA has two strands, not three as proposed in competing theories. She gave quantitative details about the shape and size of the double helix. The all- important missing piece of the puzzle, that she could not discover from her data, was how the bases paired on the inside of the helix, and thus the secret of heredity itself. That discovery remained for Watson and Crick to make.
After Randall presented Franklin's data and unpublished conclusions at a routine seminar, aspects of her results were informally communicated to Watson and Crick by Maurice Wilkins and Max Perutz, without her or John Randall's knowledge. It was Watson and Crick who put all the pieces of the puzzle together from a variety of sources including Franklin's results, to build their ultimately correct and complete description of DNA's structure. Their model for the structure of DNA appeared in the journal Nature in April, 1953, alongside Franklin's own report.
Rosalind Franklin never knew that Watson and Crick had gotten access to her results. At the time of the Watson and Crick publication and afterwards, Franklin appears not to have been bitter about their accomplishment. In her own publications about DNA structure, she agreed with their essential conclusions but remained skeptical about some details of their model. Franklin moved on to work on an even more challenging problem: the structure of an entire virus, called the Tobacco Mosaic Virus. Her subsequent publications on this topic would include four more papers in the journal Nature. Rosalind Franklin was friendly with both James Watson and Francis Crick, and communicated regularly with them until her life and career were cut short by cancer in April of 1958, at the age of 37. She died with a reputation around the world for her contributions to knowledge about the structure of carbon compounds and of viruses. After her death, Watson and Crick made abundantly clear in public lectures that they could not have discovered the structure of DNA without her work. However, because the Nobel Prize is not awarded posthumously, Rosalind Franklin could not be cited for her essential role in the discovery of the physical basis of genetic heredity. "
Rosalind Franklin, in my opinion, is one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century that few people know about.
I would have thought Carol Vorderman would have been a good candidate, but maybe that's a bit too UK centric.
Yay! One of my personal heroes, Admiral Grace Hopper. My admiration of her comes mostly from being a great manager of geeks.
One of my favorite quotes from her, and something I try to live by every day in my career, "You manage resources; you lead people."
In other words, people are not resources. You can't just assign warm bodies against tasks and expect work output to magically appear. Instead, you give people the tools they need to accomplish the work they want to do, and inspire them to do the right work for your organization.
"You cannot find out which view is the right one by science in the ordinary sense." - C.S. Lewis on Intelligent Design
Being "geeky" i.e. being technical/ly inventive, is not something which requires physical strength or male genitals. And given how new the field of IT is, I find it difficult to believe that the disproportionate numbers of men vs. women in IT is purely due to engrained traditions.
Okay, this particular article is ridiculous, but I'm sure we could all think of far more men able to go on a list of great geeks than women. So can we conclude that being technical/ly inventive is something that on the whole men do better?
I nominate Jes Hall. KDE Developer, photographer, and all around ubergeek!
No, Chuck Norris travelled back in time. He gave Curie the plutonium on their first date.
What a crap list, no mention of Radia Perlman.
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
Whoever put Paris Hilton on the list needs to be shot. If you want a REAL geek girl who also shows the goods go for (SFW), the self-described "nerd of porn."
Now, THAT's a face you'd never get tired of cumming on.
The page ain't loadin' for me, and it's not in cache yet. Is Stevie "Kill Creek" Case on the list?
Which is more painful? Going to work or gouging your eye out with a spoon? Find out!
http://www.workorspoon.com
Wasn't Java supposed to be a WebOS? Why, exactly, should I rewrite my online applications to run on GoogOS?
HRESULT WinAPIGetSystemProcessThreadMetricsMenu...
LibraryVolumeModuleHandlePtrEx(PHSPTMMLVM PHndl);
Paris Hilton, to me, fits geek definition #1. True, not in the spirit of the list, but technically accurate nonetheless -
geek
One entry found for geek.
Main Entry: geek
Pronunciation: 'gEk
Function: noun
Etymology: probably from English dialect geek, geck fool, from Low German geck, from Middle Low German
1 : a carnival performer often billed as a wild man whose act usually includes biting the head off a live chicken or snake
2 : a person often of an intellectual bent who is disliked
3 : an enthusiast or expert especially in a technological field or activity
She was great as that waitress in Cheers! Oh wait, I thought you meant RHEA Perlman.
Actually, the most common (and useful in bombs) isotope of plutonium is Pu-239. This is primarily an alpha emitter. Unless you eat it or inhale particles of it, it's unlikely to kill you terribly quickly unless you put a neutron reflector around it and cause it to rapidly fission (as happened to a few unfortunate experimenters at Los Alamos in the 40s).
-b.
Agreed! She is a hottie and is certainly smart.
TFA is down so I'm just going by comments here.
h tml
Heidi Hammel has been on a TON of TV space documentaries. She does a lot of science and a lot of outreach.
I'd sure vote for putting her in consideration at least. I don't know about top 10, because there ARE a lot to choose from
http://heritage.stsci.edu/1999/29/bio/bio_hammel.
Inexplicably, there's no page for Dr Hammel, but she is mini-bio'd in this article about a minor planet named for her:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3530_Hammel
Caroline was William Herschel's sister. She actually did a TON of the gruntwork for Herschel's massive life's work, and saw essentially no reward for it. There are a LOT of women in past centuries that did brilliant work in obscurity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Herschel
I don't think the people doing this list did ANY research at all.
I would like to nominate Veronica Belmont, from CNet.
:P
Daaaaamn, that's all I can say.
Stevie Case?:)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevie_Case
Chaos is Divine *
I swear, Slashdot's taggers are a harsh crowd. The minute something hits that isn't hard news, they're all over it with that depressing "slownewsday" tag-in-the-face.
You could have a day that goes like this:
Microsoft opens complete Windows source code
Steve Ballmer Resigns from Microsoft, Will Become Carpenter
Nintendo Asks: What Makes a Good Game
Bill Gates and Larry Ellison Announce "Domestic Partnership."
Steve Wozniak bests Steve Jobs in UFC
And that Nintendo story will get a slownewsday tag before the electrons dry...
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
Saw a special last year about the radiophonics labs producing music for the British public TV in the 50-70s time period. The women there stood out. Cool stuff. http://www.delia-derbyshire.org/
Morality, filters both ways.
Yes, you're right.
;-)
After I posted that comment I continued reading the wiki articles on both and was surprised to learn that the common characterization of plutonium as "one of the most toxic substances known to man" is pretty much bunk. The particles it emits don't penetrate the skin, you have to breate or ingest particles for it to do any real harm, apparently.
But then there was the case where they deliberately injected it into convicts and terminally ill patients to see what would happen. That would have sucked.
Criticality accidents where fission chain reactions expose you to massive radiation and you die within days is probably what I was thinking about. Yeah, that's it.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
Porn star, AND she's had a website since 1996, which is entirely written by her, using notepad.
The latest Slashdot meme.
"North America was created in 1492."
Yes, Christopher Columbus "created" North America in a supercollider (in his parents' basement, I'm sure). It wasn't until decades later that trace elements of North America were found naturally occurring in extremely small amounts, thanks to North America's extremely long half-life combined with one-in-a-million occurrences of natural plate tectonics.
There's an entire chart of about 100 famous women scientists in history up on the web, which is only a tiny fraction of the total number of real geek women. I'd say that there are probably in the order of a thousand plus who are TRULY famous and TRULY geeky (although there are many many more than that who are "merely" really good geeks).
I'd say that it might be much more interesting to compile a comprehensive list and then allow for ranked voting to find the most famous (now) of the truly amazing geek women who live (or have lived) truly amazing lives that go as far beyond what most would call hardcore geek as the hardcore geeks go beyond the mundane in "real life".
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I'm wondering if they meant Polonium. Mme. Curie discovered it, and named it after her native Poland.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
I wish Paris would have been first so I wouldn't have had to read the whole article.
Audrey Tang?
How did Paris Hilton make the list, but Hedy Lamarr failed to?
<HARVEY-KORMAN> That's Hedley! </HARVEY-KORMAN>
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Perhaps most important of all, Roberta Williams wrote games for people - not specifically men or women - who enjoyed a good story with strong characters. She is remarkable for excelling in a mostly male-dominated industry without having to resort to the image of "PC game princess".
A dventure (yes, there's a pic).
Well, she was topless in the (original) cover package of the Soft Porn adventure..http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softporn_
I'm not overly religious, but I'd bet that putting Paris Hilton and Ada Byron in the same top-ten list guarantees the author one of the top-ten spots in hell.
Obviously this article needs help. Let's nominate some replacements.
Any list that doesn't include Violet from Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events isn't worth wasting my time on.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
They missed one of my all time favorites Hedy Lamarr. She invented spread spectrum radio.
Sorry to break it for you, but it is very likely a myth. Hedy Lamarr probably did not invented spread spectrum: she was married to Fritz Mandl, owner of Hirtenberger Patronenfabrik, the main producer of arms and ammunitions in Austria, where she was born. In 1937, she fled from her husband and went to Hollywood, where, with George Antheil. Before that, there is evidence that something very simmilar to frequency hoping was discussed in the german factory of Siemens and Halske, probably originated in discussions with Mandl. More information about this can be found in the book "Everything's Relative", from Tony Rothman.
No wait, you're right, it is Hedy.
Unknown host pong.
Sorry, I'm not awake and totally missed the joke! Please accept my apologies :)
Silly rabbit
The gorgeous Anousheh Ansari, the first female space tourist, Skepchick Rebecca Watson, and Mae Jemison. I'm sure I could think of many others.
"The impossible often has a certain integrity that the merely improbable lacks" - Dirk Gently
Hey, I know one of those geek girls! (Aleks)
Anyway, if we're including fictional geeks, then where the hell is Chloe O'Brian? Computer genius and uber-hacker (she busted into the NSA, remember; the only thing she can't crack is a Phoenix firewall), and she handles a mean machine gun to boot. Without her, Jack Bauer would be nothing. Nothing!
You must think in Russian.
should be on the list. WTF is F*&$ing PARIS HILTON doing there?? gah!!! on the other hand, if you count how many geeks have copies of her phonebook/"private" videos/pictures, then MAYBE.
Wil Wheaton is a recognized leader in the gaming and geek community. Go check out his blog, http://www.wilwheaton.net/, and tell me he wouldn't qualify. Way more then frakking Paris Hilton.
Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to conviction
I don't know if she is top ten, but she's a girl and a geek.
And, as long as they are including Lisa Simpson, why not Dana Scully?
Indeed it is. In fact, you will sometimes here the professor refer to his headcrab as "heady" (Hedy). A cute name, and a tribute to a real female geek... although I'm not sure a defanged neutered brain-suching sci-fi alien is all that complimentary :-)
FreeBSD devilette, and one that actually used FreeBSD. For that alone she deserves a mention.
Carol Shaw, the creator of River Raid.
Circumcision is child abuse.
...after all she did invent the pie chart...
But then it took men like Edward Tufte to point out that pie charts are just really bad for most purposes.
Of that list only Marie Curie really rates.
My List:
Marie Curie
Agnes Pockels
Hypatia of Alexandria
Emmy Noether
Margaret Mead
Barbara McClintock
Gerty Cori
Rita Levi-Montalcini
Sophie Germain
Mary Leakey
Plutonium has been found in trace amounts in uranium ore. As you put in as a result of freak naturally-occurring fission or left atoms that have not decayed due too quantum uncertainty. As I said in possibly trace amounts.. As in an atom or two.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Margaret Hamilton. In charge of the NASA Apollo Flight Software from 1963-72. Coined the term "software engineering". Created the field of high-reliability software. "No software bug was ever found on any manned space flight Apollo mission."
Good-looking, too; I met her once.
Mary Anning, a self-taught and respected paleontologist who worked in early 19th-century England, a time when it was pretty tough for a female to get any respect in scientific work.
What a lame list that they had to add fictional characters and Paris Hilton to fill out the list.
She actually has the patent on it filed under her real name. She was also given an award by the EFF.
Nothing is invented in a vacuum but she has the patent on it.
"Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil received U.S. patent #2,292,387 for their Secret Communication System on August 11, 1942. This early version of frequency hopping used a piano roll to change between 88 frequencies and was intended to make radio-guided torpedoes harder for enemies to detect or jam. The patent was little-known until recently because Lamarr applied for it under her then-married name of Hedy Kiesler Markey. Neither Lamarr nor Antheil made any money from the patent. It had expired by the time the U.S. military barely began using this system after 1962. It took electronics technology a long time to catch up with the concept."
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
One of the fun things about talking about geeks is how filthy rich some of them have become- allt he way back to whn A=ple was the fastest IPO of its time to YouTube of this year. I dont see many women on the rich geek list. I dont think I'd include Meg Whitman because she didnmt create the technology, just ran a booming company.
knows what a geek is, I would expect Kari Byron to at least beat out Lisa Simpson,Paris Hilton, or Daryl Hannah. Hell, Kari can replace all 3 if you ask me. WTF's going on here!
'sig' deleted due to the stupidity of it's 'nature'
No one's mentioned Dr. Bonnie Dunbar. She's definitely a geek: "Dr. Dunbar worked for Boeing Computer Services for two years as a systems analyst." And I think 50 days in space on five space shuttle missions plus numerous awards and medals makes her at least a nominee for the Top Ten. If she only had a pink cell phone...
I find it funny that in an era of supposed equality of the sexes that women are being more objectified than ever. Scandalous, stupid women are glorified.
These people come up with a lame list of "geek" women and can't put the effort into filling it with women who have actually contributed something to society. Instead they deem a cartoon character and a dirty tramp, who may as well be a cartoon, significant.
We're supposed to respect women, and rightly so, but all this crap seems to be encouraging people to do the opposite.
I agree that this list is insulting. It sure makes me feel like all of those years I spent in graduate school working on my Ph.D. in physics were a total waste. I've been involved in a lot of public outreach projects aimed at improving the visibility of women scientists, but apparently these public outreach programs have not had any effect on the perceptions of the general public.
The person who came up with the CNET list certainly didn't try very hard at all. If they really were interested in creating a list of women who have contributed to mathematics and science, there are a lot of organizations and web sites where they could have found better information. For example:
The Women of NASA
The Society of Women Engineers
The Association of Women in Science
The Committee on Women in Science and Engineering at the National Academies of Science
And of course, there are also many Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) Programs at colleges and universities throughout the United States.
People always wonder why more women do not pursue careers in science and engineering. The persistence of the misconception that only men can be successful in science and engineering, as well as stupid garbage like this list, are definitely not helping. Reading the CNET list made me feel as though women's contributions to science are completely unappreciated. On the other hand, reading some of the Slashdot comments mentioning prominent women who should have been on the list, gives me a little bit of hope that things can change.
Danica McKellar, AKA "Winnie Cooper" on "The Wonder Years." Everyone's favorite girl next door is also a math nerd.
http://www.danicamckellar.com/
She published a math proof, linked on her website, titled:
"Percolation and Gibbs states multiplicity for ferromagnetic
Ashkin-Teller models on Z2"
(no, I have no idea what that is, I'm an engineer not a mathematician).
WTF? No swimsuit calendar?
Inventor of frequency hopping radio, during WWII.
Have gnu, will travel.
Hedy Kiesler Markey, better known as Hedy Lamarr, yes, the actress. Everyone reading this has probably used her invention: the idea of frequency hopping is used in your spread spectrum cell phone (among other things).
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
Former Playboy Playmate Gillian Bonner, who is the founder of the software company "Black Dragon Productions".
And, from searching around on the web, apparently she a lesbian. What more can you ask for??
Well ok, I guess I would prefer it if she were a bisexual.
Don't support DRM - Boycott Itunes
Everyone's complaining about Paris Hilton, Lisa Simpson, etc. Let's compile our own top 10 list.
My votes (in no particular order):
Sophie Germain - Mathematician (Number theory, prime numbers)
Emmy(?) Noether - Mathematician/Physicist (Conservation laws from symmetries, algebras)
Marie Curie - Physicist - Discovered radioactivity.
Hypatia of Alexander - Astronomer (Inverntor of astrolabe, supposedly)
Valentina Tereshkova - First woman in space
Rosalind Franklin - Chemist (DNA structure, Coal/Graphite)
Barbara McClintock - Biologist (Chromosomes, work on Maize)
Maria Goeppert-Mayer - Physicist (Atomic structure, nucleon numbers)
Jocelyn Bell Burnell - Astronomer (Discovered pulsars)
Gertrude Elion - Biologist (Treatments for leukemia, malaria, herpes, work on organ transplants)
Mainly names off the top of my head, anyone got some good ones that I missed?
PS: I'm talking REAL women here, noted for their SCIENTIFIC contributions...
1. why is Ada Lovelace at the top? Grace Hopper made much more contributions to computer science
2. why is a fictional character ranked over Marie Curie?
3. why is Paris Hilton on this list and not someone who's much more deserving, like oh, Jane Goodall?
Okay I know, it's not historical or profound, but here's 3 that they left off my Sexy geeks list. Morgan Webb (love Xplay) Olivia Munn (love ATOTS) and my personal fav: Michelle Rodriguez (actress, and yes that means she CAN act not just look pretty, and an avid game player, she's kicked more butt on FPS games than Paris ever could... can Paris even spell butt?) And for the more intelectually minded they could have looked up any of the following in Google Women +Physics +Bio Research Nobel Prize Winners +Women Litarary Scholars +Women etc etc etc...
They should have chosen grandmaster Judit Polgar. You don't get much geekier than chess, and you don't get much better than Judit Polgar.
Amber MacArthur is friggin obnoxious. She's the first TV "personality" who made me realize the importance of broadcasting school. Everything she says is delivered in uniform robotic fashion. She would use the same inflections giving a eulogy as she would giving a Ruby on Rails lecture. Thanks ever so much for equating her Harry Kissinger monotone with sexiness.
Agreed, and may I add that some of the entries completely nullify the validity of the list? Yea, varily, some of the entries will outright downgrade the others on the list. It makes me ashamed to call myself a girl geek, (even though I don't even speak or write a word of C).
To make a list as this one and post it on Slashdot is positively insulting to all those women (see other comments) who are first class geeks. The only thing Curie and Hilton have in common is their gender; to compare Marie Curie with Paris Hilton is to call an apple 'an interesting new kind of plastics'.
Her invention was called COBOL.
No wonder no one programs in language made by woman!
... Paris Hilton or Daryl Hannah.
And agree with the other folks comments that there are plenty of female geeks who should qualify over fictional characters.
There was that girl with the big black glasses on ZDnet computer show back in 2000. Can't remember her name but had a great combo of computer smarts, personality, and hot but nerdy looks (probably chosen on purpose for the show but maybe her natural style).
And what about Kim Kommando with a nationally syndicated radio program?
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
http://www.groklaw.net/
Carrie-Anne Moss (The Matrix)
America Ferrera (Ugly Betty)
Jessica Alba (Dark Angel, Fantastic 4)
Carrie Fisher (Star Wars)
Jeri Ryan (Star Trek: Voyager)
I mean, come on C-Net, if you are gonna pick fillers, at least come close!
Coderz 4 Life
We must not forget her!
Chuck Norris's abilities to time-travel are severely limited, however--he can only go back 6,000 years.
Wil
Wil
wiki
Though not born as a girl, clearly Julianne Frances Haugh is missing. She wrote the Unix shadow password framework.
It also existed in natural form for billions of years previous to 1940.
Submitted for your approval: a fine team of geek girls by any definition.
Agreed she has no business on the list, but in what possible way do any of these attributes disqualify her. As someone else pointed out Hedy Lamar was a bona-fide geek and actress. As for left-wing and activist, I can't even begin to think how that's relevant.
Perhaps but nobody had discovered it naturally until after it was created.
How about the convienient fact that Grace Hopper was a friggin REAR ADMIRAL Lower Half in the US Navy? Hell, her being in the US Navy was one of the main reasons she HAD the opportunities to accomplish everything she did. I should have expected this sort of omission from a friggin UK editor. People need to do more research before publishing articles like this. This editor needs to be fired!
Not to be too pedantic about this. But Plutonium was discovered not created.
If you're going to include fictional characters, then not having Willow on the list is a freaking crime. Geez.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marissa_Mayer
Not gonna argue relative placement with the metric buttload of other nominees, but figured she was at least worth mentioning.
The point is that being an actress is almost her sole claim to fame. Disqualifying her is not the issue. She never should have been qualified in the first place! The qualifications of Hedy Lamar are not in dispute. She most certainly deserves to be on the list, as do dozens of other, brilliant, scientific women. To have Darryl Hanna on this list for reasons that I don't think anyone here even associates with geekdom is an insult to the entire purpose of this list. Hedy Lamar easily qualifies for "geek" status. The fact that she was an actress is secondary in this particular situation.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
They certainly had "loops" - the cards were arranged in a looped chain, IIRC. :-)
But, I still think the looms - the inspiration for all the programmable devices that followed - qualify as programmable devices themselves. I think that your setting the bar too high - especially since Babbage never built his analytical engine at all.
Clear, Dark Skies
So, you're saying Babbage was actually studying for his Compiler Theory class?
Clear, Dark Skies
Indeed she has. But it does not mean that she created it -- there are a lot of patents out there whose author was not the actual inventor. The book I mentioned before has more details, but, essentially, from what could be gathered from her written memories, what she did was say that an enemy would have a lot more problem in deflecting a torpedo if it changed the controlling transmission frequencies -- something she probably listened before from her german husband. The rest of the creation was basically she watching the engineers putting it toghether.
Yeah.....it was really polonium. Not only is the article a crappy one but so is the idiot who posted the story.....
Gorkman
Let's see here:
Ada Byron: Worlds first programmer on Charles Babbage's computer.
Val Tereshkova: Cosmonaut, Hero of Russia, Crater named for her on the moon.
Grace Hopper: Inventor of the Mark 1 Calculator; COBOL; really found the first computer "bug"
Rosalind Franklin: Expert in DNA and crystallography; probably should have receive a Nobel prize.
Marie Curie: Won TWO Nobel Prizes discovered Radium & Polonium.
Mary Shelley: Author of Frankenstein the archetypal geek gone mad story.
A fairly impressive list.
Next Up
Daryl Hanna: Acted in Blade Runner & Attack of the 50 foot woman, designed two board games.
Lisa Simpson: Fictitious, doesn't count. get it off the list.
Aleks Krotoski:Expert in the social psychology of virtual worlds, writer for the Guardian
Paris Hilton:Huh?
Aleks might be able to stay, on the list but the rest gotta go. DAryl might be a geek but come on top ten?
Here are some suggestions for additions to the list:
Maria Mayer: Nobel Prize in Physics. Determined the "shell" structure of the atom.
Jewel Cobb:Studied the effects of chemotherapy non-cancerous cells. Received 41 honorary doctorates.
Evelyn Granville:Second woman in the USA to receive a PhD in mathematics. Worked for IBM on the team that developed the formulation of orbit computations and computer procedures for NASA.
Or to go OLD school:
Theano: Wife of Pythagoras. Worked on the formula to derive Golden Rectangle.
Shop smart, Shop S-Mart.
there are a lot of patents out there whose author was not the actual inventor.
Give it up, she invented it. Sure, she may have gotten the idea from someone else who came up with the idea, but most discoveries are accidents. She learned from what she heard, and shared it with others. Someone that invents in a vacuum and does not share the idea does not count as the inventor. She was the first to document the idea publicly such that others could understand and recreate the idea. That makes her the inventor, even if someone else thought of it first.
Learn to love Alaska
So you choose a book over a patent for you proof?
Okay... I would say that since there is a documented patent that your position has the burden of proof and a single book doesn't do it for me.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Plutonium was created before it was discovered. Then, they knew to look for it, and found it naturally occurring in trace amounts. So it was created first, then discovered second. And, even if it was discovered first, it has also been created. So it is both.
Learn to love Alaska
Can't do any better than to refer you to the book. Patents are just proof of who registered first, not who created the invention. Are you sure you don't know any other examples of this?
Hold on there, Bucko.
Yes, Paris Hilton is an insulting choice, but that's because she's a vapid person (or at least a vapid persona) with absolutely no geek credentials, being chosen over an almost infinite supply of real female geeks. The problem is not with her being a "dirty tramp". If Paris were celibate, she still would not qualify, and if the real geeks fucked the whole fleet whenever it was in town, they still would qualify. I've met bona fide geek girls in both categories (OK, maybe not the whole fleet, but you get the point).
If somebody made a list of geek boys, nobody would think of suggesting that a candidate's sex life with had anything to do with the matter. Not unless it was geeky sex, anyhow.
If you want to preach respect for women, you need to get over defining their entire worth in terms of who they sleep with. And make sure that in the process you don't get into the backlash condition of refusing to acknowledge them as sexual people at all, because that's just as bad.
didn't Tiffany Amber Thiessen discover a math theorem or solve a proof and have it named after her? that's geeky and she's hot.
I can't understand why everyone is so up in arms over the inclusion of Lisa Simpson. Yes, there are a number of real women out there worthy of inclusion, some of whom are physically attractive (great motivator for Hedy by the way, doesn't demean her contributions at all). But this is the author's list and rather than getting in a huff over it, take a second to think of why Lisa is included.
In 18 years of being a force in popular culture, the Simpsons has been beamed to over a generation of children. During this time, Lisa has been one of the most constant, intelligent, and inspiring voices in an era of increasingly dumbed down media consumption. Media has influence, and even cartoon characters can become role models, so while it is easy to dismiss the character as fictional, the creation has likely had a very real and positive influence over young girls. Because of the changes in culture and media, probably a lot more influence than many of the other members of the list would have had were they alive today.
Its impossible to really rank people and whether or not she or he would really belong on a list is arbitrary. Maybe Lisa Simpson is less important and doesn't belong, but to call her presence there an "insult to women" is flat out absurd. I can't really defend Paris though.
And what about Sophie Wilson? Designed the first Acorn Microcomputer whilst being an undergrad student, set out to design the instruction set for ARM, etc.
Hottest geekiest girl ever.
I wouldn't take this as any sort of measuring stick, it's some random list a scrub at an increasingly irrelevant tech news site cobbled together in want of actual content. I'm sure every name popped up in the first twenty hits on a google search, where the summaries were probably lifted from.
Scientists in general don't have terribly much exposure. I bet a top ten scientist list would read something like Einstein, Newton, Stephen Hawking, Archimedes, Dr. Frankenstein, Jimmy Neutron, etc.
I agree this is not a list I should be on (try telling that to the sweet but misguided fans who once stuck my photo in as the photo for "geek" in Wikipedia), but at least I'm a better fit than Paris freaking Hilton.
~~~
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I bet Lisa would appreciate the irony.
My other SIG is a Sauer.
She's the geekiest!
Having filler like Lisa Simpson is bad enough, but Paris Hilton?
If they had to have a hottie couldn't they have used one of the Victoria's Secret models, IIRC one of them has a degree in mathematics.
And why, might you ask? Well because:
So there you have it, in a nutshell, top ten list fashion if you will. Women are just better at most things then men, when they have a chance to learn and are interested. Now having said that, i think sometimes its hard to find woemn who are actualy interested in becomming programmers because the vast majority of them don't dig the uber testostrone filled field. The female web geeks that I know, rarely miss deadlines, their code is impecable AND commented. The few source level programmers I know simply hate most all of the frameworks and packages out there because they make little sense in their organization and are just full of bugs. They would rather re-write the function and have it be rock solid.
So next time you run into a woman or a young girl who shows an interest in programming, support them, nurture and support this aspiration, we would ALL be a lot better off because of it.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
Now there are 2 other stupid ones, of course, but give me a break. I saw her talk about alternative energy and she was completely uninformed (in my opinion). That said, she did look hot in Splash.
This is a slashdotism. The article says "Polonium" - which is much more likely and a lot less worrying.
I'd stick with Asia Carrera. She is a certifiable Genius. Her IQ is beyond almost all of those that post to Slashdot, even the smart ones.
She also writes review columns for various magazines and creates levels and characters for various computer games as a modder. She is a true geek and nerd in a great many senses of the words.
The article had some credibility before it got to her. Ownership of a PSP and having your name slapped on a game does not make you a geek.
"My break dancing days are over, but there's always the Funky Chicken" --The Full Monty
In fact it's Marie Sklodowska-Curie.
Or maybe I'm just being Polish...
danicamckellar.com Winnie Cooper from the Wonder Years. From WikiPedia: She coauthored a scientific paper which appeared in a peer-reviewed physics journal. The paper proves a theorem that has come to be known as the Chayes-McKellar-Winn Theorem. She has an Erdos-Bacon number of 6, the lowest of any working actor. Very geeky, very hot.
Shop smart, Shop S-Mart.
Miss a period and you're in trouble.
--- You are in a little twisty maze of comments, all different.
No Killcreek? This list is bullshit! What has Stevie Case done for the world that Paris Hilton hasn't, I ask you?
Besides disappear.
How about Vicca?
Born in Moscow, Russia, Vicca began fashion modeling at the age of 14, while studying physics, mathematics, and fencing at a school for the academically gifted. She eventually learned four languages and become a member of Mensa. After winning the Miss Teen Moscow pageant, she left Moscow, initially for a Siberian college to study optical electronics, but quickly chose the life of a professional model, and later European porn actress, in Budapest.
It GOES in the NOSE!
I put the 't' in electrical engineering.
Based on the meta-tags in the article, this is the second in CNET's series of top 10 geeks.
A quick search on their site came up with this, their list of top 10 nerds and geeks overall.
Guess what, not a single female in the bunch. And no ficticious characters. Worst of all, it includes CmdrTaco!
BTW...the article was apparently written by one of CNETs editors...Chris Stevens (see here for a profile...he's about halfway down the page. And he looks like such a nice young man...
Are you sure you don't know any other examples of this?
I'm not sure the "this" you are referring to. I know a number of cases where people confuse inventors because of people who make improvements (Edison and the light bulb), and there were many discoveries by the Greeks that were rediscovered and attributed to non-Greeks before it was discovered that it was discovered by Greeks. In cases like that, most references still point to the modern re-discoverer as the discoverer because it is convenient and they are the ones that made the discovery as used in today's world. Rarely are discoveries stolen out from under one person by another without some form of complaint. Name one person that challenged her patent at the time, and I'll recant. I know there are more modern references to how she came to the knowledge, but all discoveries are made from the shoulders of giants. That someone got her 99% of the way there does not mean she can't be credited with it. Newton was obviously not the first to recognize that there is gravity, but he is credited for some gravity related theories that others have stated before him, but may not have supported with proper documentation (like a proof or a patent).
Learn to love Alaska
What is interesting, in a disturbing way, is that Marie Curies workbooks that she used while discovering radium are still considered dangerously radioactive.
Perhaps this says more about how conservative the limits are regarding what is considered "dangerously radioactive". Bear in mind that she unwittingly handled highly radioactive materials in a haphazard manner for decades and still lived a couple of years beyond average life expectancy for the time.
Bonus points for being mentioned in Half-Life 2 as the name of Dr. Kleiner's pet headcrab. I always assumed Hedy was a misspelling of an affectionate nickname for a headcrab...
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Vicca?
That is a name I have not heard in a long time, a long time.
Yep, she should qualify for a spot as well.
Animated cartoon character? Nonsense. What about somebody like Emily du Chatalet ( http://www.politics.guardian.co.uk/women/story/0,, 1774981,00.html , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89milie_du_Ch%C3% A2telet), a
forgotten great mind that had more fun than Paris Hilton :)
It is always better to be a first grade version of yourself than a second grade version of someone else.
Heather Mills is (the former) Mrs McCartney. You may be thinking of Heather Couper http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_Couper/
Joke is in subject.
"You raised my hopes and then dashed them quite expertly sir. Bravo."
Yes, absolutely!
Spread spectrum in its various forms are key to WiFi (802.11abgn), CDMA, bluetooth, the new wireless USB and plenty of military protocols.
oh god, that's worse than Lisa Simpson.
The point is that being an actress is almost her sole claim to fame.
Then why start whining about her political leanings? It makes it sound like she does have a reason to be on the list, but you want her excluded because of personal conflict with some political organization. You complain about them putting people on some list for irrelevant reasons, then start listing your own irrelevant reasons why she should be left off. It makes you look like some politically motivated nut, not to mention the hypocracy of doing exactly the same thing that you are complaining about in others...
Learn to love Alaska
...insulting as Parison Hilton.
She and all the other braindead hosts on G4 do nothing but make my Trek-watching time less enjoyable.
Seriously, talking about videogames does not make you a geek.
Leah is great ! Does Leah do music, too ? If not, may I suggest MC-Router ( http://www.myspace.com/1gb ) and Lil Nix ? Smart + Cute is the best.
let-me-leave-slashdot-to-the-children
While most Plutonium is man-made it is an element and occurs naturally therefore it's existence was discovered/predicted to exist in 1940.
/plutnim/) is a radioactive, metallic chemical element. It has the symbol Pu and the atomic number 94. It is the element used in most modern nuclear weapons. The most important isotope of plutonium is 239Pu, with a half-life of 24,110 years. It can be made from natural uranium and is fissile. The most stable isotope is 244Pu, with a half-life of about 80 million years, long enough to be found in extremely small quantities in nature.
Sheesh the web is a resource folks why try to post these things from memory?!!!
-anon
From Wiki:
Plutonium (IPA:
Yeah, someone screwed up. She carried polonium around in her lab coat pockets, not plutonium.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
http://keygen.us/img/g-vert.jpg
Grace Hopper was great, but she did not invent the first compiler, see Autocoder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autocoder
Sophie Germain and Emmy Noether were very significant mathematicians. Another significant mathematician to add to the long list of "female math geeks" is Emma Lehmer.
chongo (was here)
I would nominate Limor Fried (aka ladyada). She makes really cool electronic hacks. Check her out at ladyada.net.
Someone geeking out on the internet in the mid-late '90s had to eventually run across Eve's Pi page at Caltech. I'm not sure if the Caltech page is still alive, but it is somewhat recreated on her own domain. Very geeky, very woman.
Oh, and she's much hotter than that Paris thing.
~Roberta Williams belongs on this list.~
:(
Absence makes the heart go yonder
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89milie_du_Ch%C3% A2telet
What are you listening to? (http://megamanic.blogetery.com/)
what comes to mind are her careful notes documenting how she could hold a chunk of radium up to her forehead, and she could still see it even if she closed her eyes. Also, IIRC, the pair of them would purify uranium and radium from pitchblende right on the countertop in their lab. No shielding, no special hygiene or cleaning procedures - so everywhere they went, they shed radioactive dust.
Remember, they had no idea what radiation was, it was just another cool phenomena to observe, document and fool around with.
Clear, Dark Skies
- Uhura
- Aeon Flux
- Trinity
What is this world coming to? What does one have to do to get recognition?
...is that I, a geek girl, could possibly be grouped together with Paris Hilton for any reason. I can think of very few well known people who I would less like to be like, and most of those are either dictators or warlords. And, not only is it an insult to the famous scientific women that they left off the list, it's an insult to the women who are on the list, because it trivializes their accomplishments if a blond heiress who's best know for a sex tape actually belongs on the same list as women like Marie Curie and Grace Murray Hopper.
Eagles may soar, but weasles don't get sucked into jet engines...
How about Tatjana van Vark?
rmathew.com
http://rvincoletto.multiply.com/journal/item/289
What about Radia Perlman, she invented the spanning tree protocol and even has Perl in her name!
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
She translated Newton Principia Mathematica thingy so the into an understandable form. Seriously important impact. Not to mention vivacioius babe who bedded Volataire amoungst others. Seriously none of the list come close.
No Dorothy Hodgkin either who syntheised the structure of penecilin even though she was told it was impossible.
plutonium wasn't discovered for years after Mme. Curie died. If anything, she'd have walked around with radium.
For a tech site, this is a pretty damn ignorant mistake.
mark
What was the bio you read? I find myself wanting to read it, as I obviously don't know as much about Frankenstein's Monster or Mary Shelley as I thought I did.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Tss tss, I agree with Paris Hilton being on the list, she demonstrated a lot of skills mastering joystick action.... ELC
Sir Edmond le Cochon (Gruik).
Now, Fred... Has Amy Acker done much other work?
Allow me to humbly nominate my compatriot Sor Juana Ines de La Cruz
In a time when women were not allowed to receive a proper education she pursued it with all her might. She was versed in the natural sciences, a very talented poet and playwright, musician, philosopher who also dabbled in astronomy and mathematics for good measure.
Why feminists and women rights' advocates outside Mexico have not adopted her as an icon is beyond me.
In Mexico she is rightly revered by having her image in our currency.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Do geeky girls tan?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I felt the same way at first! I didn't like that the adventure game turned into an action game at the end so I didn't finish it my first time around. However, I drank deeply from the cup of walkthroughs and finished it not long ago (like 10 years later) and I quite enjoyed the ending! I highly recommend you do the same! There's some really bone chilling and gross stuff to be seen!
There have been a lot of good substitutes for media twit Paris Hilton's replacement. I'd like to throw Laura Lemay's name into the ring: http://www.lauralemay.com/
Oh, yeah, like that's what every one on Slashdot does. Slashdot is just so-o-o-o-o well known for keeping non-political discussions non-political. { rolling eyes } I'll bet that if she was right-wing and I accused her of such your response would have been different. We all know how well people on the right side of the spectrum are granted fairness on Slashdot. (Not.)
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
She (Amy Acker) was in some of the earlier seasons of Wishbone, which was a very cool kids show that was unfortunately cancelled before my son was really old enough to appreciate it. I haven't managed to figure out if any of the episodes they have for sale include her.
And yes, I'm a big fan of both Fred and early Willow. As for later Willow, I never bought her and Tara as a couple. I actually thought Kennedy was a lot more plausible.
Ruth Goldenberg, famous VMS developer and documenter (VMS is more richly documented in the "Internals and Data Structures" books than any flavor of unix could ever dream of being).
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
Where's (Who's) that girl who was photographed wearing nothing but a MacBook?
"Anonymous could not immediately be reached for further comment." - International Business Times