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Top Ten Geeks of the Millennium?
ywwg asks: "Everyone's doing the top ten this-or-that of the Millennium, so why don't we join the fray? Let's choose the top ten geeks of the millennium staying out of the past ten years. I'm thinking of the greats like Gallileo and Newton. What oppressed, nerdy, ignored, and shunned individuals proved everyone wrong? "
Invented Helicopters, tanks, could doodle like a mo-fo. He needs to be on the list!
Albert Einstein
Richard Feynman
Erlang Developer and podcaster
After all, where would geeks like us be without him?
XenoWolf The Original - Since 1993
John W. Mauchly (1907-1980) - Inventor of the first large-scale general-purpose electronic computer. Check it out here
Justen Stepka
and specificly the guy who gave use to the @ sign.
1)Leonardo Da Vinci, of course. He was the original hacker. I mean, damn, he invented the helicopter hundreds of years before it was ever possible to build.
2) Gutenberg. Printing press. 'Nuff said.
3) Issac Asimov. Genius. Scientist. Author.Ladies man . Well maybe not a ladies man. But he wrote the definitive book on black holes. neat-o.
--BlueLines "The cost of living hasn't affected it's popularity." -anonymous
My feeling is that Steve Wozniak wouldn't be out of place on such a list.
Kirk Christiansen invented the lego brick with his son.
Turing has to be in there
maybe M. Curie, Einstein, the guy who invented 0 (maybe that was the previous millenium
When was the last time two guys who ran a bicycle repair shop achieved something that man had dreamed of doing since the beginning of time?
Sure, Otto Lilienthal laid a lot of the groundwork, and Benz developed the engine, but it took Orville and Wilbur to pull it all together.
-cwk.
And what about Lady Ada Byron?
Not only did he bring us that nifty coordinate system, he was also the first to convincingly *prove* his existence, which is the next best thing to justifying it
(Cogito, ergo sum, baby!)
Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.
A) Hair
B) Theory of relativity
C) Pacifist who invented the atomic bomb
D) Believer in aliens, time travel
E) Lack of some common social skills
F) Didn't even need a computer
I heard a story, and I'm not sure if it's true or not, but it sounds good:
While Einstein was teaching at Princeton, the Personnel Office received a call for someone looking for his address and telephone number. The receptionist replied that she was unable to give that information over the telephone.
A sheepish voice came back over the phone line. "This is Professor Einstein. I've forgotten where I live. Can you help me?"
I do what the voices on my console tell me to do.
The man basically invented the alternate current power supply system we use today, he invented the radio (yes, Tesla invented the radio)... Did much work with transformers... I mean come on, the man built a remote controlled boat 100 years ago... I forget all the other great stuff he did. But he was really underappreciated.
The streets shall flow with the blood of the Guberminky.
Bill Gates is also on there. Even though I despise Microsoft, I still grudgingly give him credit--if it weren't for him, a lot of people probably wouldn't have gotten into computers. So, he is an imprtant geek..but should remain out of the top 5 ;)
A guy that worked on studying barnacles for 8 years during which time he suppressed publication of a complete mode of explanation of life because he was afraid of the reaction. Not to mention his treatises on the movement of subsoil by earthworms ;)
Leonardo Da Vinci
Gallileo (Yeah I spelled it wrong i think)
Tesla
Carl Sagan
Hawkings
Einstein
Newton
Liebnitz
BG!=geek
BG=business
Although the nerdy and shunned parts probably could fit.
I do what the voices on my console tell me to do.
leonhard euler (1707-1783), for giving us so damned much mathematical output that we still haven't published it all afaik, and he's been dead for over 200 years, hardly even slowing down after he lost his vision. probably his coolest deed is proving that e^(pi*i) - 1 = 0, linking five of the most basic mathematical constants into one simple equation, as well as providing a link between the real and complex planes.
other candidates imho would include leonardo da vinci, thomas edison, blaise pascal, and my dog waffles.
-- the opinions stated above aren't those of my employer. in fact, they're probably not even my own. you know what, ju
Galileo Galilei Johannes Gutenberg Leonardo Da Vinci John Von Neumann Norbert Wiener Henry Ford Thomas Edison James Maxwell James Watt Guglielmo Marconi
- Built a motor out of bugs and sticks
- Hold's the world's record for manmade lightning generation
- Invented the radio
- Invented AC
- Invented a form of X10 for telephony and remote device control
- Was terrified of the number "3" and human hair
He's the man.10. All the guys at the MIT Bell Labs during 1950-1970
9. DaVinci
8. Galileo
7. Capernicus
6. Kepler
5. Guttenburg
4. Alan Cox
3. Stallman
2. Einstein
1. Stephen Hawking
Sorry Linus Torvalds would be #11... Stallman would get #5 just on entertainment value!
Has anyone seen Alan Cox without his shades?
No one has seen what you have seen, and until that happens, we're all going to think that you're nuts. - Jack O'Neil
Check this out, it's got some more info about the guy. A bloody genius, no question.
http://www.neuronet.pitt.edu/~bogdan/tesla/
The streets shall flow with the blood of the Guberminky.
NASA.
Despite failures, despite bugs and glitches, despite an apatheic country to their success (yet who is all too eager to point out their faults)....these are the people who put Man on the moon. The ones responsible for my entire elementary school crowding around one little tv to watch the space shuttle shoot off into space.
They were, even if people don't see them so now..the makers of dreams, for quite a few people. And so as an entity, I nominate them.
I may be totally out of place suggesting one of these but I feel he is at least good enogh for this list
INPO (In No Particular Order)
1. William Gibson
2. Leonardo DaVinci
3. Albert Einstien
4. Alexander Graham Bell
5. Bejamin Franklin
6. Steve Wozniak
7. Bill Gates (Flame me all you want he did change the face of modern comuting)
8. Marie Curie
9. Albert Schwietzer
10. Linus Torvalds
(I can't stop at ten that is really to few, maybe it should be a top 50 after all
11. Henry Ford (Hacked a car that the common man could afford)
12. Adolf Hitler (Maybe an asshole but his engineers pioneered Jet aircraft under his ideas. I could be wrong on who actually order the research so feel free to correct me but many people under Nazi command made great contributions to modern science)
13. Wright Brothers
Tahts all for now, I expect flames very soon, but I stand by my post.
He's the one Katz would have written about. :)
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
In no particular order and just a few minutes of thought:
DaVinci, for reasons already stated.
Michaelangelo - master architect and builder as well as painter and sculptor. There's real engineering in that art.
Gallileo; what could be more geek than dropping cannonballs off a tower "as an experiment" or building a telescope from scratch. And he got in trouble with the thought police a few centuries before PC came into vouge.
Gutenberg - where would OReilley be without *his* invention?
James Watt - made steam power practical leading to the Industrial Revoultion, etc...
Bejamin Franklin, for being a geek with style, fame, *and* political clout.
Samuel Morse - telegraphy became the "internet" of the last century (read the book "The Victorian Internet" and see if you agree)
Thomas Edison - quintessinal hardware hacker, entrepreneur, even suffered from NIH [not invented here] at times and wasn't above stealing a trade secret or two [so was he a cracker as well as a hacker?].
Otto Diesel - practical internal (infernal?) combustion engine, and all the cars, ships, planes, oil business, smog, etc. that came from it.
Enrico Fermi - "So you want this grant to build an atomic pile *WHERE*?!"
He's not as radical now, since the church pardoned him a couple of years back.
Of course, the world is flat. Just like my head.
And, everyone knows that the planets revolve around ME.
I do what the voices on my console tell me to do.
Hmmm... I think it was the Discovery Channel that had the top 100 most influential people of the milleneum (sp?). Gutenberg came out as number 1 as without a method of mass printing technology could not have advanced as far as fast, not to mention the Reformation.
.... damn, there's just too many.....
for what its worth I would include Godel (sorry no umlats), Grace Hopper, Bohr, Newton, Einstein, the Bernoullis, Schroedinger, Leibnitz, von Nueman, Crick, Watson, Euler, William of Occam,
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Blaise Pascal was not only a brilliant physicist and mathematician (his accomplishments include the foundations of modern probability theory), but also - arguably - the original existentialist philospher. In his lifetime the geocentric model of the universe was largely abandoned; with this he found himself, and the meaning of human life, at risk of being lost entirely in the vastness of time and space.
A few quotations, all from Pensees, to contemplate:
"When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, and the little space I fill, and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of space of which I am ignorant, and which knows me not, I am frightened, and am astonished at being here rather than there, why now rather than then." (#205)
"I see those frightful spaces of the universe which surround me, and I find myself tied to one corner of this vast expanse, without knowing why I am put in this place rather than in another, nor why the short time which is given me to live is assigned to me at this point rather than at another of the whole eternity which was before me or which shall come after me." (#194)
"Numbers imitate space, which is of a different nature" (#119)
"If we dreamt the same thing every night, it would affect us as much as the objects we see every day. And if an artisan were sure to dream every night for twelve hours' duration that he was a king, I believe he would be almost as happy as a king, who should dream every night for twelvc hours on end that we was an artisan.
"If we were to dream very night that we were pursued by enemies, and harrassed by these painful phantoms, or that we passed every day in different occupations, as in making a voyage, we should suffer almost as much as if it were real, and should fear to sleep, a we fear to wake when we dread in fact to enter on such mishaps. And, indeed, it would cause pretty nearly the same discomforts as the reality.
"But since dreams are all different, and each single one is diversified, what is seen in them affects us much less than what we see when awake, because of its continuity, which is not, however, so continuous and level as not to change too; but iot changes less abruptly, except rarely, as when we travel, and then we say, "It seems to me that I am dreaming." For life is a dream a little less inconsistant." (#386)
In other news, astrophysicists have announced that they now know what all that dark matter is: it's stupidity.
He turned away from suicide as a complete failure in life, making the rest of his life a conscious experiment in clear, original thinking and contribution in many fields. Agree or disagree with me but I would have to want R. Buckminster (Bucky) Fuller on the list. Hey, Stewart Brand, if your on /., would you agree?
*** "It's only trivia until you need it." JMR ***
I think these guys should definately make it on the list:
Einstein
Stephen Hawking
Alan Turing
Thomas Edison - True geek, he slept under his workbench : )
Sigmund Freud
P.S. I can't think of any female geeks, could someone help me out?
--- I think, therefore I exist, anything outside of that is uncertain.
I was in Elementary School when the Space Shuttle blew up.... I guess I'm getting old. 26 and already over the hill.
I do what the voices on my console tell me to do.
Nope, it wasn't Guillermo. His "invention" was merely a copy of the already patented device Tesla had invented almost 2 years previously. Tesla was the first. (And yes I know most history books say Guillermo invented it... they're wrong, plain and simple.)
The streets shall flow with the blood of the Guberminky.
Alan Turing would have to be my pick for the list.
Here was a closet homosexual who defined much of the underlying architecture for how computers are used and programmed today and was instrumental in helping the western allied forces in their defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II with his codebreaking efforts at Bletchley Park in England. His fundamental Turing Machine is taught in automata courses throughout the world in Computer Science schools.
Turing was a complete geek. An overachieving social retard who ultimately took his own life in 1954 after being tried in the British courts for being gay and having his security clearance stolen for on the basis of his sexual orientation.
Alan Turing. A top-10 geek of the millenium.
Roger Penrose:
A mathematician who beat theoretical physicists at their own game. His theory of what fundamental space time is quantized into(twistors: one dimentional objects, twisting in a 4 dimentional complex space-time) is WAAAAY more believable that super-string theory, an ad hoc theory that requires up to 26 dimentions, some of which just decide to "curl up" to leave us with our normal 4-D space-time.
One of the founders of computer science. A man far ahead of his time.
Head over to http://www.turing.org.uk/ if you'd like to learn more.
I'll be very disappointed if he doesn't get into the top 5...
Benjamin Franklin.
e /American_Literature/Early_American_Litera ture/Franklin,_Benjamin/Writings/
This guy did it all, he was a politician, a soldier and a scientist. He invented bifocals, the franklin stove and others. He was the first to propose daylight savings time, (though it's still pitch black when I leave for and leave from work in the winter time...). He is also credited with creating the first political cartoon. He was instrumental in drumming up support european support for america during the revolutionary war, especially the french.
If you want more info, check this link
http://dmoz.org/Arts/Literature/World_Literatur
he has one of the wekest bodies and the most powerful mind on the planet right now, it's just such a cool contrast!
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
Putting something like this in a top ten format is obviously pretty much impossible, even once we get past arguing over the finer details of what "geek" means. However, I'd nominate Copernicus to any list like this. The development of the heliocentric system is definitely a millennial moment in my book.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Ignaz Semmelweiss, physician who discovered that washing one's hand before delivering a baby could cut maternal deaths by over 90%. For this, he was ostracized by his peers, who didn't want to believe they'd been killing their patients, and wound up in an insane asylum. A true geek, he stuck to his principle to the end, and ultimately prevailed. And, as a true ubergeek, had the unforeseen consequence of his new technology creating a population explosion....
InstaPundit! Ahead of the Curve Since 30 Minutes Ago
Experimenters, tinkerers, inventors, pioneers, and fine exemplars of the geek spirit -- they made the machines that led us into flight and into spaceflight.
--Jim
....we shouldn't forget the man that invented the net!
Hmm...let's see...
1) Robert Goddard - (the father of rocketry)
2) Albert Einstein - (He's the geek's geek!)
3) Werner von Braun - (jet engine - he didn't invent it, but he improved it; rocketry)
4) Leonardo Da Vinci - (he just deserves it, other than the helicopter, he also invented a tank-like vehicle)
5 & 6) the Wright brothers - (airplane...)
7) Rene Descartes - (for reasons metioned earlier)
8) Clarence Johnson - (creator of the Skunk Works)
9) The Apollo 13 ground crew - (we all know what these guys did)
10) John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley - (invented the transistor)
**There are varying shades of darkness, I am but one of the many.**
Alan Turing -- for his work on computation and automata
Charles Proteus Steinmetz - alternating current, electric machines
Oliver Heaviside - Laplace transforms!!
Claude Shannon - Applying Boolean Logic to electric circuits, Information Theory, Automata
Carl Fredrick Gauss - duh
Kurt Goedel - Incompleteness theorem
Leonhard Euler - duh
Werner von Braun - Father of modern rocketry
Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schroedinger - Quantum Mechanics
I nominate Dr. Frankenstein for creating the ultimate hack...
/dev/eskil ---
European monk Adelard of Bath translated Arab mathematicianal-Khowarizmi's book "Al-jabr" in 1120. Within 20 years, Arabic decimals spread throughout Europe.
Leon Battista Alberti wrote "On Painting" in 1431, the first scientific study of perspective visualiztation. The mathematical interpretation of 3-D scenes as 2-D images continues to be the foundation of computer graphics and simulations.
William Oughtred invented the most successful computing device in history, the slide rule, based on the development of logarithms seven years earlier, in 1621.
--
How about Kurt Gödel, who set Mathematics on its ear, freed it from Logicism, and was an all around strange guy to boot? I mean, he basically changed the whole direction of mathematics, which indirectly changed the whole direction of physics, which....
and if you still need names...
Stupid people will be persecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.
From http://www.neuronet.pitt.edu/~bogdan/tesla/index.h tm:
Another site: http://www.apc.net/bturner/tesla.htmHow many of us have our jobs, hobbies and/or avocations without the inventions of this man? He should also go on the all-time hackers list as well. I just wish he could have gotten that transmission-of-electricity-through-the-air thing working. :)
Russ
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. - George Orwell or George Bush?
That means the last 1000 years (not just the last century):
I'd go for:
1. Albert "Nuclear Al" Einstein
2. Isaac "Falling Apple" Newton
3. Galileo "Jupiter's Moons" Galilie
4. Nikolai "Around the Sun" Copernicus
5. Buckminster "The Bucky Ball" Fuller
6. Thomas "Electric Tom" Edison
7. Charles "Galapagos Kid" Darwin
8. Rene "I am what I am" Descartes
9. Leonardo "The Artist" da Vinci
10. Rob "The Slash" Malda (1,000 brownie points!)
Without trying to recompile all the great scientists and inventors and others, which has been done already very well by A&E with their Biography's special, I would like to consider those geeks post 1984:
Linus Torvalds - who gave us Linux, which defines the post-PC Era.
Tim Berners-Lee - a physicist, who was the use of the ARPAnet for something more.
Marc Andreessen - who wrote a small inconsequential browser, that woke up Bill Gates, and might prove his downfall.
Steve Jobs - not for the Macintosh, or Apple, but for his work at NEXT and Pixar, in bringing Hollywood and Disney to the computer community.
Bezos at Amazon - Showing us that Marketing on the Internet matters
Richard Stallman - who began the vision for Open Source programming with GNU.
But that is just a beginning.
Einstein, of course! And Bill Gates. Flame me all you want, Thorvaldlovers. /w
Everyone's been suggesting inventor type geeks. There's someone who didn't really invent anything, but made as big of an impact, perhaps bigger, than all the other geeks on the list.
That man is Ghandi.
Or Amazing Grace Hopper. Without her, we'd be getting "problems" out of the system.
These guys and others like them are all but forgotten now, but without them there would have been no da Vinci, no Descartes, and no Turing.
Some of my other suggestions would be:
I would of course be remiss without noting that Marie Curie and Ada Lovelace's contributions are even more remarkable considering the tremendous bias against women doing serious scientific work at their respective times in history.
To be honest, though, you are talking about the top geeks of the millennium. Ten slots aren't going to be enough to do justice. Technology has come a long way in this millennium, and there are too many people that are responsible for that to limit the number to 10 slots. You need to recognize 25 people at least. 50 would be better.
I can't believe no one has already nominated him.
Were it not for his radiation theory, there would be no quantom physics. The concept of energy being finitely divisible is by far the most clever hack in physics.
Jordan Bettis
``Wherever you go, there's another stupid sigfile quote.''In no particular order-
Giordano Bruno- great philosopher, scientist, first psychologist- and I won't even get into the art of memory
Thomas Jefferson- Architect, Scientist, helped invent the U.S.
Goethe- Writer, philosopher, Scientist
William of Occam- Occam's Razor-'nuff said
Scooter Lee Washtub IV Troutmouthed Heathen
Actually, you don't have to slog through his Meditations to see the problem with his "proof". He states right at the beginning that his proof is not for unbelievers and the uneducated (i.e. it was only for the elite) and requires that you take a leap of faith. Apart from that, he was a fine mathematician.
Okay, I'll admit it's mostly geeks from this century. There are two reasons for that:
That which does not kill me only makes me whinier
How about the guy who made the Industrial Revolution possible with the "invention" of the concept and application of interchangeable parts?
Forget the cotton gin... This guy changed the world forever in the pursuit of making cheaper firearms.
I'm so very surprised that I've seen only one mention of Gracie Hopper. Anyone that carried around nano-seconds and pico-seconds has got my vote.
Doug Engelbart
Inventor of the computer as we use it today. Gave the famous mother of all demos.
Leonard Euler
Analysis Incarnate. Best mathematician of the 19th century.
Isaac Newton
"The laws of motion and gravity lay hid darkness.
God said let Newton be and all was light"
Nikoli Copernicus
Cracked open the firmament. Started the scientific revolution still going today.
Alan Turing
We are still trying to understand his ideas.
Daniel Dennet
Developing the science of consciousness.
Louis Pasteur
Brought science to biology.
Linus Pauling.
Only person ever to win two unshared Nobel Prizes.
Ilya Prigogine
The thermodynamics of self-assembly.
Rene Descartes
Publication of La Géométrie in 1637 is first use of fully symbolic mathematics.
I dunno about the top 10, but Donald Knuth has made excellent contributions to the theory side of computer science. It's all about algorithms, baby!
You can't forget HH The 14th Dalai Lama.
He advances the Open Souce versions of politics, religion, and spirituality.
Russ
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. - George Orwell or George Bush?
I nominate John Harrison, who devised the first reliable marine chronograph. Not only did he spend a lifetime building a better clock, he was thoroughly unappreciated in that lifetime. And his clocks changed the world -- the marine chronograph made modern navigation possible, and gave us a whole new window into space and time.
OK, now what?
Edmond's work attempting to prove Kepler's works in inverse-square force relationships between planets helped get Newton's ball rolling, so to speak. Edmond Halley was friend, financier and publisher to Sir Isaac Newton, and helped him with the milestone mathematics text, the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica.
:) ]
As astronomer, he discovered/charted numerous stars and nebulae.
Edmond Halley is considered to be the first to calculate the age of the planet Earth by measuring the levels of land salt that had been eroded into the oceans.
Oh, and that little bit about discovering a historically recurring stellar phenomena that had a period of 76 years. He worked out that the comet would return in 1758... too bad he didn't live to see the return of the comet that would be named for him.
[Of course, maybe I'm biased...
[
While there are many other possibilities for "Geek O' the Millenium" the man who I feel truly personified Geekdom and who was supremely unconcerned about it was Richard Feinman.
From the development of Feinman diagrams to the resolution of the Shuttle Explosion debacle with Occam-like wit and precision, his life is an example all self proclaimed Geeks must bow to.
-Charles-A.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Thomas Edison -
This guy made most people's short list for person of the millennium so I think he's a shoe-in to be one of the top geeks. Practically lived in his lab, barely slept more than a couple hours a night, holds more inventions than almost anybody.
Alan Turing -
Surely close to all computer geeks hearts. He practically invented Computer Science before we ever had computers. Besides that, his contributions to the Allied war effort was immense in the Ultra project.
Wow, ten choices for 1,000 years is very limiting. Think of how many nerds and geeks and other brillant social undesirables there have been. My list would include Einstein, Decartes, Newton and Woz. It is far easier to make up a list of the top ten worst- with our little friend gates leading the way.
Am I the only one who remebers the Woz? At the least he should get honorable mention =]
This is very easy to explain. Imagine three ten-{dollar,pound} notes. Now, trade these in for pennies. The 2000th penny came from the second note, not from the third one.
Since there are a pletheura of Geeks in the world and always have been, I'm going to list the top geek in each major field I can think of, which should round me out to about ten or so...
...
1) Physics - This is tough, so many great....well actually, no it isn't
Einstein
2) Optics/Astronomy - guess where I'm going here?
Galellieo (sp?)
3) Chemistry - This is a tough one, but I think I have to take my hat (and glasses) off to
Marie Currie (the first girl geek on the list)
4) Biology - I'm going to have to split off medicine.. and genetics cause this one goes to
Charles Darwin
5) Medicine - I told you so
Louie Pasteur almost made it, then I had to do some research and find out who invented the birth control pill, which is arguably one of the things which has changed our world immeasurably. So Kudos to Carl Djerassi:
6) Genetics - Guess who?
Watson and Crick (I know it's two guys, but whatever
7) Literature and learning - Guttenbergh. You can't deny his contribution to the geeks of the world.
8) Math - It's a field, it's geeky, he's Isaac Newton.
9&10) Science Fiction - I think the last two will be, because we all worship it and we all need a break from this serious stuff...
My hat's off to Carl Sagan (who is just plain cool)
and
George Lucas.
hmmmm?
Bill gates changed the landscape of his bank account on the backs of IT people everywhere.
He's a small man with petty ideals.
_________________________
First of all, I'd like to say that I intensely dislike this stupid "top ten" nonsense. It reminds me of an anecdote about Enrico Fermi, when he arrived in America around WWII. They told him that somebody or the other was "a great general", to which he replied "what is the definition of a great general?" They figured that it was a general who had won five consecutive battles. He then pointed out that, if all there were no "great generals" and all armies had equal forces, 1/32 - roughly 3% - of all generals would have won five consecutive battles, solely by luck. "Now, has any of them ever won /ten/ consecutive battles...?"
Also, I should point out that, even though Newton might have been a geek, he was by no means "shunned" or "opressed". He was arrogant, ambitious and ruthless. He was Master of the Mint, Fellow of the Royal Society, and very powerful on the political establishment.
None of this means that Newton was not a great man. It just means that he definitely does not fit the "outcast genius" stereotype.
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
He's a small man with petty ideals and vision.
_________________________
You guys are forgetting the obvious, genius, comedian,
Frank Zappa! His style is amazing, and his
solos, awesome...
And he is a geek. He never did drugs, he had a
funny voice, and named his kids, well, odd names.
Matt Groening did this back in 93'....a funny read - Life in Hell.
I guess I'm not good at explaining myself....but Zappa brough music to a new, untouched level.
He was an autodidact genius. He is much appreciated.
- "You are what you is"
What was she thinking?
Evolution is key to understanding how complex systems can originate without a designer. I'd say that is significant.
Goddard was a rare combination of a theoretical thinker AND a practical engineer and tinkerer.
He was also a victim of journalistic FUD and mistrustful of governments.
This quote from goddard has been my sig for quite a long time now.
----
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Puh-lease. This is an entirely non-issue. The point of view you are representing here is thankfully dying out with other such flat-earth flathead memes that could only flourish in an environment of widespread ignorance. That time is coming to an end; *has* come to an end. Stay healthy, you may die out the last of your breed. For an example of how people may see your point of view, and as an illustration to the rest of /. of the aberrant mindset you're coming from, I humbly submit http://www.godhatesfags.com - a truly deranged site. Lorenzo
Not only did Tesla prove the worth of AC power, he defeated the evil Edison and his army of thugs to get people to accept it. Unfortunately, Edison succeeded in getting it restricted to 55hz (I think), thus making it much less safe than it would have been under Tessla's proposed 400hz. It was later upgraded to 60hz, but that's about as far as it can go without reinventing everything in the entire country.
I also second the votes for Nikola Tesla, Alan Turing, Ada Lovelace, and Marie Curie.
Darian
~O~
Well, like it or not, here's my top picks: Joseph Lister - the guy who figured out that if a surgeon disinfects before surgury, the patient has a better chance of not dying. Listerine is named after him. Professor Dewar - Invented the thermos Sir Robert Alexander Watson-Watt - Invented Radar James Young Simpson - The reason surgery doesn't hurt so much, he developed anaesthesia. James Clerk Maxwell - resp. for the concept of the electro-magnetic field, proposed that when a charged particle was accellerated, the radiation produced has the same velocity as light, paved the way for Einstein's Reletivity, and quantum physics. John Logie Baird - A technical genious. Invented Television Alexander Graham Bell - Invented the telephone. Founded AT&T, where Unix was later developed. Sir Alexander Fleming - Penicillin John Boyd Dunlop - The Pneumatic tyre Einstein- duh....
Opinionated Law Student Strikes Again!
You appear to be correct. According to this short paper by Jessica Apple, it's still uncertain who first invented the telescope, but it wasn't Galileo. (The Dutch gentleman you were trying to remember was Hans Lippershey.)
Rather than post the same message to the board every time DaVinci is mentioned, I'll just provide a link to my previous response to the question of DaVinci and Michelangelo as "Geeks of the Millenium"
First of all I want to say that I think that except of da Vinci, most of the replies thought about people from the last 300 years and not the last 1000 years. Unfortunately is my knowledge about people from the earlier days very limited as well.
So here is my list whose order is irrelevant, since I think I forget a bunch in anyway and I superbias and lean to know more physicians and chemists.
I am certain I have forgotten many great people, but these are some which made definately a great difference in science and therefore our lifestyle today.
-- Stephan Richter
I'd feel a little uncomfortable if I started thinking that way... :)
--
I'm thinking in particular Neal Stephenson, Philip K. Dick, and Robert A. Heinlein.
They may not be geeks themselves. But they have inspired legions of geeks.
I am sad to see that the late Stanley Kubrick has not been mentioned thus far.
A true geek in the strictest sense of the word, he is largely considered to be one of the greatest film directors to ever live. To watch a Kubrick film is to see art of the first order in cinematic form. He is the Michaelangelo of our times. Symbolism and imagination drip from every Stanley Kubrick work, while a flawless technical precision executes every scene and shot perfectly. A clear sanity in vision illustrates an insane world around us. Every film of his is a masterpiece. And while we have McDonald's directors ruling Hollywood today, pumping out mediocre film after mediocre film, Kubrick was always patient and expert, taking years to complete a film, but always cost conscious. An expensive film != a great film. He knew that all too well.
That is not even to mention the effect he has had on all geeks that have come since him. What computer scientist in artificial intelligence isn't inspired by HAL from Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey"? Kubrick elevated science fiction film from men dressed in foam lizard suits to a legitimate expressive art form.
Scientists != geeks. There's more to it than that. And Kubruck is most definitely a geek. If Stanley Kubrick isn't a geek of the millennium, (if only to represent the art of film) then who is?
Dave
It's hard to believe but I seem to be the first to thing of Gottlob Frege, mathematician and the father of modern logic. I mean, he laid the ground for computer technology as we know it (admittedly with the help of Russell and others).
Bertrand Russell, one of the greatest minds in mathematics and logic.
David Hume, you know, empirism, the enlightenment, leading to modern science.
And how about some linguists:
Sir William Jones, the first to prove that sanskrit is indeed related to latin and greek, laying ground for comparative linguistics.
Ferdinand de Saussure, father of structuralism and modern lingustic theory.
No, not Noam Chomsky, although he counts as one of the most influential, inspiring thousands of linguists to publish heaps of rubbish.
I don't know about you people, but I don't think anyone fits the bill of "geek" as it is meant today like Steve Wozniak. When you think of his accomplishments, and how well he has always carried himself, he's gotta be my top vote.
When Edison's DC generators were found incapable of sending electricity for any useful distance, Nicolai Tesla's AC generators and his patents were 'leased' to a man named Westinghouse, who manufactured generators and created the enabling technology (electric power) which has made possible radio, television, computers, MTV, CD's, lighted houses, street lamps, stop lights, Times Square, the transistor, logic gates, embedded computers, linux, perl, basic, cobol, electric typewriters, most modern manufacturing, space launches, satellites, and therefore their products such as Elvis, REM, Puff Daddy, Milton Berle, televised boxing matches, Star Wars, and more. The drive for dominance between DC and AC as methods was intense: The Edison faction, trying to get DC accepted, publically electocuted a dog with AC to show the danger of alternating current. Tesla also held initial patents and built working devices for many radio devices, a form of television, sonar, radio-controlled guidance systems, a source of illumination which had no obvious point of origin, photography of the 'kirlian aura', and wireless transmission of electric power. And let us not forget the Tesla Coil, without which 'It's Alive! It's Alive!' would probably have never been possible (Frankenstein). Tesla was an unusual man. The scent of peaches made him pass out and he required exactly thirteen napkins at each meal. He suffered from fevers as a child. He reported that his idea of electricity was fundamentally different from all current views, and he could build his machines in his mind to test them with the consequence that his first physical implementation frequently worked perfectly. He is said to have built massive coils of wire whose diameter may have been as large as a foot, and which coils used the thickness of the earth as a resonant device -- these coils on one occasion were said to produce small earthquakes. His sale of generator patents to Westinghouse contained a payment of so many cents per kilowatt, but Westinghouse later induced Tesla to give up this payment. Tesla did so. He died penniless in the late 40's. Tesla gave us our world as we know it. Tesla's later experiments concerned a set of devices he'd invented which would ring the globe, providing free electric power for the entire world's population. It actually worked. You could stick light bulbs into the ground a half mile from his laboratory, and they would light up. Needless to say, Tesla's plans for free power for the world didn't sound so great to Westinghouse and Company. Strangely, a fire destroyed his laboratory and all notes with it, and this was the end of free power for the world. Let's tip the hat to Nicolai Tesla ... the original open source kind of guy, and the man who enabled every day you experience. Thank you, Mr. Tesla
== buddha is as buddha does ==
You forgot about the Lovelace part. Always has seemed an odd name for a geeky chick to me. Almost sounds a ``working'' name for a modern-day underwear model:).
Withdrawal before climax is very ineffective and those who try this are usually called "parents."
If you don't think he was oppressed, nerdy, ignored, and shunned, then boy do I have a book for you to read.
-- Slashdot sucks.
Scientific discoveries are important, but that's not the entire issue. I think we should look at a person's way of life and character before we decide. Given that, some of my top ten geeks for the millenium would be (at random order):
1. Leonardo de-Vinci. He was obsessed with technology and ideas, he just couldn't stop.
2. Thomas Edison. Same reasons.
3. Copernicus. Fighting the Catholic Church over what he just knew was true is alot like what we like seeing in geeks today.
4. An honoray second millenium geek: Archimede. Ok, so he's a bit older than that, but if he weren't I'd nominate him as the #1 geek in all of history. He was a scientist, mechanic, mathematician and much more - and once he started, he'd go into what is now known as "hack mode". This was also how he found his death: he was drawing geometry on the sand with his stick in Alexandria the Greek army invaded the city. He didn't stop what he was doing; he probably didn't even notice. A Greek soldier approached him and asked him who he was and what the hell he was doing. All Archimede said was "Please, I'm in the middle of something" and the soldier slayed him with his sword. Now THAT's a geek! Too bad we're in the wrong millenium.
5. RMS. Now we don't want to choose people too recent, but I think RMS really is unique. He founded a political and ideological movement based on geek values, a movement that grew in strength and became so much larger and stronger than he ever imagined. He deserves a place with the top ten.
- Adi Stav
Wernher Von Braun?
Sure, his V2 rockets made things ugly in London for a while, but they were his first steps towards things like the Saturn V that put man on the moon (and Skylab on Australia).
Other potential geeks in non-computer fields that I haven't heard mentioned:
- Watson and Crick (DNA)
- Jaques-Yves Cousteau (scuba)
- John A. Roebling (wire rope and the Brooklyn Bridge)
And how about Martin Luther and Thomas Paine and all the others that have used the free exchange of ideas to challenge and eventually change what the Powers That Be can get away with?
"I'm a scientist! I don't think, I observe!" - Dr. Clayton Forrester
A suggested list, just my opinion....
I think that if we are to truly give credit where credit is due, we should pick people who created something totally new, instead of taking previously existing technology and massaging it into something popular (Bill Gates, etc.). These would be my picks:
1 - Johannes Guttenberg (Invented mass comm.)
2 - Isaac Newton (Invented most of physics/calc.)
3 - Albert Einstein (THE geek posterboy, E=MC^2)
4 - Leonardo Da Vinci (The Do-Everything geek)
5 - Charles Babbage (Invented the computer)
6 - Nikolai Tesla (Invented AC motors, radio)
7 - Verner Von Braun (Gave us spaceflight)
8 - Galileo Galilei (Astronomer, Inventor, Rebel)
9 - James Watt (Started the industrial revolution)
10 - Henry Ford (Invented the assembly line)
A quick note on item 6 - Tesla. People will say "wait a minute... didn't marconi invent radio ?". The answer is no. Tesla is the actual inventor of radio, a fact that the supreme court of the U.S. has upheld. There is a website (tesla: forgotten at the smithsonian) which documents this.
Also, if this list extended to groups of people instead of just individuals, I would put NASA, Bell Labs, and the Lockheed Skunk Works on the list somewhere.... although it would be hard to rank these organizations in comparison with the individuals named. Perhaps 2 lists are needed ?
There have been some real good references, including Godel and especially Gauss, but there are two that at least deserve discussion before the matter is laid to rest (as if it everwill :)
Bernhard Riemann - He "invented" the integral as most readers here would know it, worked in multiple dimensions (impetus for Einstein's work), and other general cool math stuff (important stuff if you ask me).
Evariste Galois - Has to be number 1. He died at age 21 in a duel that he knew he was going to lose. The night before he wrote down as much new math as he could trying to impart his impressive genius to the rest of us. His contributions led to the only area of math named after a person (Galois Theory obviously). Why was he a geek. Well, his reckless, anti-social demise was pretty much the ultimate fuck you to the rest of us. If he had lived algebra would be an entirely different subject today.
Just sticking up for the mathematicions a bit.
Ben
RMS
Euler
Tesla
Da Vinci
Kurt Gödel
Alan Turing
Frank Herbert
Sergey P. Korolyov
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Richard Philips Feynman (woo!!! go RPF!)
-- d'arcy poirot
The first person to write a standard operating system (CP/M) for personal computers (Gates stole the OS and the credit). He designed an operating system perfectly adapted for computers with 16k of memory and 256k floppies; it is ironic that elements of it are still being used in the era of 128Mb desktop computers with 20G hard drives
The previous post mentions building a telescope from scratch.. Dosen't say anything about INVENTING one.
Guide to getting incressed Karma:
1) Be rude about that nice Gates boy, therefore I nominate him as the anti-geed of the millennium
2) Say nice stuff about Linus thingmagig, therefore I nominate him as the geek of the millenium
3) Acuracy is unimportant (why bother streching my simple brain to think about all those years when the last ten will do?)
4) Post early (opps forgot to do that!)
5) (Long posts == more points) != prizes (this line just takes up space)
Some have already mentioned Copernicus, but it is not clear just why he is one of the more important people who could go on the list. As others have noted, there are very few people from the first half of the millenium. This is because not much new or interesting was thought of between the decline of classical civilization and the rennaisance. Copernicus was the first to really push western thinking back up to the plane acheived by Greek Scholars two thousand years before. It could be argued that his insight into the structure of the universe in general and the solar system in particular were an essential precondition to the acheivement of a Western Technological Civilization. Why? Because a system of thought that cannot accurately explain the most obvious and observable phenomena of the natural world cannot achieve much in the way of technological innovation. Copernicus got the ball rolling. Think of the insight and courage neccessary to go against the entire world order of the time. Few of us, even some of the people rightly nominated for this list, can claim both of these attributes.
introduced telecommunication; 'nuff said.
A wonk maybe, but not a geek.
* Not that having your fame be entirely due to a post mortum press agent should totally be held against a figure. Socrates (I think, I could be mixing up the two mentioned in this sentance) is known purely by mention of him as a teacher in Plato's writings. (And maybe one satirical play by Aristophanes.) There is even some theorising that he never existed and was only used as a literary foil as it were for Plato's philosophy.
But, none of these guys are this millenuem(sp) either, so its way OT.
...will work for Chick tracts...
well, I nominate myself as the greatest geek of the past 17 hours, having contributed this slashdot post to the world.
Oh, and to those who say that third millennium dosn't start untill 2001, stfu
"Suble Mind control? why do html buttons say submit?",
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
The entire ground crew during the Apollo 13 mission for their pure inginuity and resolve during a time of crisis that can hardly be matched for drama. Pure brain power rising to the top !
If you don't understand anything I post, please accept that I ate paste as a small boy...
It seems that not all moderation is the same. The moderation for insightful and interesting are on a per post basis. However, the moderation for offtopic and troll marks should apply to whole threads? Or at least have special versions some of the moderation marks that moderate the entire thread.
I am tired of seeing all the responses that make trolling worthwhile. If people just didn't take the time to respond then it would be as effective.
1) Richard Feynmann- Kind of an All-American Hacker... Pioneered Quantum ElectroDynamics, was one the first to outline quantum computing (and pointed out that reversible computation had no thermodynamic effects), hence having large impacts on not only Quantum Computing, but Nanotech, etc. This work alone will change the way we think of Reality. He was also one of the first computer hackers in the sense we think of them today.
:-)
2) Alan Turing- You gotta admit, it takes a pretty bizarre mind to come up with shit like a UTM when there were no computers around.
3) Marie Curie- not only opened up the world to radioactivity (and hence Quantum Mechanics, etc.), but had to overcome being female in very backwards time.
4) Nikola Tesla- On of the fathers of the modern world of electric power. His so called "wacko" experiments are currently leading the way in research of ionospheric energy and information transfer, and effects of weather control (can anyone say "HAARP"?)
5) Robert Anton Wilson- In my view, his philosophical writings (which are really a coalesence of many marginalized voices) has had a huge impact on the "underground" and any type of out-of-the-box thinking that is driving the latter half of the 20th century
6) Ivan Stang- founder of the Church of Subgenius. Praise "Bob"! 'nuff said.
7) Gregor Mendel - formalized breeding patterns of recessive/dominant genes. Although, from what I understand he massively fudged his numbers
8) Robert Oppenheimer- Father of the A-Bomb, radical populist who was eventually blacklisted. Kind of a sucky position to be in...
9) Adam Smith- for better or worse, outlined all modern economic thought in "The Wealth of Nations"...
10) Richard Stallman - This choice may seem rather idolistic, but his work and ideas form the fundamental undercurrents of current Geek thought.
I see a whole bunch of scientists, as expected. I'm going to pick Mozart. He contrasted to the aristocratic musicians of his day in his behavior. But he was definately a genius in his field, showing up all the snobby composers who saw him as unrefined.
Beer wants to be free
two points
1. you do have the pound key on your computer (you use the alt + numeric)
2. Why not just use the American $$$$$$ like everyone else?
God how obnoxious the US $ is not the only currnecy in the world you know...
Your showing how full of themselves americans are.
I nominate the great but unknown inventor Reginald Fessenden, 18xx-19xx. Perhaps his greatest contribution was the invention of amplitude modulation, which made it possible to transmit voice over radio. All Marconi accomplished was the transmission Morse code over the airwaves. Fessenden made the first radio broadcast on December 24, 1906 (see http://members.aol.com/jeff560/chrono1.htm for more information about this broadcast.)
Reginald Fessenden also invented SONAR for "seeing" objects underwater.
I haven't lost my mind; it's backed up on a CD-R somewhere
Einstien, Newton, Da Vinci, Hawking, Gallileo, Descartes, Tesla, Edison, Nobel, and all female scientists who pushed their way into a male dominated field (at the time). Sorry I can't name any specific female nerds, Not to knowledgable there :(
Hmmm... Two houses on my block recently sold for $800K each. COBOL pays my mortgage. Hmmmm...
But even if you are one of the unenlightened children, her other work is enough.
Stupid people will be persecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.
Sure, Shockley et al got a Nobel prize for the transistor. But it's been the microchip which has increased the pace of modern life. It military terms, it is a 'force multiplier'. Better communications and better computers have made possible advances in basic science and in engineering. So credit Robert Noyce and Jack Kilby who (independently) found ways to put multiple transistors on a single substrate.
Envy my 5 digit Slashdot User ID!
However, Gugliemo Marconi was first to establish wireless telegraphy (first transatlantic morse signal) even though his work was far from original. He realized the importance of this technology (contrary to the opionion of the scientific elite), improved it until it was mature thus making it popular and lucrative. Not just "being the first" but this mixture of a brilliant scientist, unconventional thinker and businessman made him go into our history books.
(My essay on Marconi and Wireless Telegraphy can be found here)
life would be much easier if you could have a look at the sourcecode
...because of this, I nominate the greatest mathematical genius of our time. Uncle Paul Erdos, it is very very sad, but this man is not known outside the mathematics circle. Why? because he did mathematics for love of it? because he never cared about fame or money? Read more about paul erdos at www.paulerdos.com
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
Longitude
was determined by dead reckoning and the dead part happened frequently when captains were wrong.
His improvements in accuracy and solutions to a thousand problems rendering a clock useless at sea are awe inspiring.
The marine chronometer perfected in the late 18 century was little modified and still in use in the middle of
the 20th century.
By the way there is really good book on the subject titled Longitude, by the same author of gallileo's daughter who's name escapes me presently.
Thanks
Kent
If anyone here has read Dick Feynman's autobiography "Surely you must be joking, Mr Feynman - The Adventures of a Curious Character", then you MUST agree that he epitomizes everything that stands for Geekdom. He is a model of self-improvement, He won a Nobel Prize and worked on the Manhattan Project, and he has varied interests - consider:
He once took a bet (he took plenty of bets) that he could learn to play the Flight of the Bumblebee on Clarinet in two weeks (without previous knowledge of the ways of the clarinet)
He spent many of his later years learning to paint - and became a fairly accomplished gallery artist
He beat an asian fellow in a contest of wits, his pencil and paper versus this fellow's abacus, and won (computing the cube root of a very large number by hand)
one of his hobbies at los alamos was safecracking. That's just cool.
his lectures are widely seen as not only incredibly informative, but also a source of great comedy
and this is just the start. HE should have got man of the century, if you ask me. but no one is.
If they're not known by a single name, they don't qualify for my list. (OK, you may not know Ignaz Semmelweis by his last name, but you should. Click on the link.) Based on the criteria listed in this post, he qualifies before most of the others.
My only question is whether Einstein should be there, on account of the large number of erroneous things being said about him (even in "Time"). He didn't invent the bomb. (Didn't have anything to do with it, except signing a letter to Roosevelt. He rejected the underlying science to his death.) I use two criteria for including him: the originality of his ideas (although quantum mechanics is equally daring in its willingness to question our deepest-held ideas) and the fact that without him no one else would have arrived at the same conclusions for decades (perhaps centuries).
The Wright brothers probably deserve consideration (but do you count them as one or two on the list?) The same counting problem occurs with the quantum-mechanicians. Once you say "Bohr," you just about have to include Schroedinger and then the floodgates are open.
Based on the criteria given, you'd have to consider Dr. Charles R. Drew, who invented blood transfusion (with others) and who was then died because he was refused a transfusion at an all-white Southern hospital because he was black.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
Millenium List:
Gutenberg
Newton
Lavoisier
Darwin
Mendel
Hilbert
Maxwell
Einstein
Pauling
Turing
Century List:
Einstein
Heisenberg
Feynman
Pauling
Turing
Von Neumann
Shockley
Knuth
Adelman
Sorry, no Gates or Torvalds, only the people who made it possible for Gates and Torvalds to do what they do.
Gates is a yuppie, not a geek. In my universe, geeks create stuff and think new thoughts. Yuppies consume and make money off the efforts of others. Geeks usually end up working for yuppies to put food on the table.
Gates has never invented anything:
**Gates didn't invent MSDOS, he bought an existing port of CPM86 and put his name on it.
**Gates ported Unix to X86 and called it Xenix; and then added enough Unix features to MSDOS 2.11 to make it useable. Stuff like subdirectories, devices as file names, piping, redirection, etc..
**Gates copied the Macintosh/Xerox OS and called it Windows.
Bill Gates would definately make my list of top businessmen, but he'll never even make the bottom of my list of creative types.
How could we forget about Tim Berners-Lee? I mean, he's only responsible for the WWW! Where would geeks be without him?
Oh, yeah, and don't forget Linus!
He's the one who sorted out D/A conversions. Without him there would be no modems, T1's or T3's that we needed to create the internet.
Kelly Johnson is the man primarily responsible for the Lockheed Skunkworks. Some aircraft that he had a large part in designing were the P-38, T-33/F-80, U-2, SR-71 (they developed the metallurgy of titanium as they went), F-94, and F-104. Also designed under his direction was the C-130, which he was somewhat ashamed of because it wasn't sleek and sexy like most of the aircraft Lockheed was known for. Many of these designs were great hacks. They were given incredibly unrealistic specifications for the time and they pulled it off.
I used to think the archetype for pretense was people who used umlauts when writing in languages which do not have them (especially in those languages which use the same symbol for diaeresis). I always enjoyed the umlaut over the "n" in Spinal Tap as a great joke about such pretension in rock-and-roll.
But now I know the true archetype: those who misspell "pretension" when flaming those who are insufficiently pretentious to use umlauts (especially when claiming such is a mis-tmesis-spelling).
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
For those of you who don't know the story...
Isaac Newton was in college when the black plague hit. He returned home for a few years until it was over. While he was home he tried to figure out planetary motion. Mathematics of the day was inadequate for the job, so he invented calculus. He figured out that planets travelled in ellipses but his calculations were off slightly because he had left all of his text books back at school and couldn't remember the exact diameter of the Earth. So he put away his work and forgot about. Eventually he went back to college. When the head of mathematics saw some of his work, he immediately resigned and gave the title to Newton. Twenty years later some other scientists were still trying to solve the problem of planetary motion and came to Newton for help with the math. Newton told them that he had already worked that out twenty years earlier but his numbers were slightly off. When others fixed the number for the radius of the Earth everything fell into place and FORCE = MASS * ACCELERATION was born. Newton's law of physics explained so much of the physical world that the various churches could no longer suppress science. For the first time, even the tides could be explained. And the world moved from an age of superstitions to an age of science and reason. The profound change in mindset still rules today.
i say it should be
1. Issac Newton (creator of physics)
2. Albert Einstein (the man to revolutionize physics)
3. George Bernhard Riemann (you try to think beyond 3 dimentions and prove it)
4. Alan Turing
"That's a very interesting question because of how unimportant it is. The great thing about the web, the great thing about the web of humanity is that we're all important.
"And, in a way, a lot of the things which upset society are when we try to put people in order."
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
You all fire up a Von Nueman machine every day but you completely forget about him for top 10 lists.
I'm glad to see several Eulers in this thread.
I'm suprised Gallios (father of modern algebra) didn't get a mention.
Others worth noting would be Gauss, Fourier, Fibinaci, and Fermat
OK that's a pretty Math-heavy group how 'bout:
Alfred Nobel - blowing stuff up is fun
Buckminister Fuller - I can't beleive he's not a top 10 geek
Linus Pauling - 2 Nobel Prizes (vitaman C is a good thing; Global Nuclear war is not!)
Charlie Papazian - Beer Geek, father of US homebrew and Microbrew movement. If like beer you owe this man a vote!!
All generalizations are false, including this one. Mark Twain
Prior to the Indian mathematician Sridhara, the concept of 0 did not exist in any known system of mathematics. He invented the concept, and Arab mathematicians picked up the idea and added it to their numbering system.
And where would binary numbering systems be without it?
-- Ellsworth, one small voice
My list includes: Galileo Galilei Leonardo DaVinci Alan Turing Copernicus Robert A. Heinlein H.G. Wells Charles Babbage Ada Byron Grace Hopper Nicoli Telsa
God how obnoxious the US $ is not the only currnecy in the world you know...
;-)
Your showing how full of themselves americans are.
Well first of all, you can't know for sure that the guy (or girl) you're responding to is an American. It's flamebait, don't sink to the same level.
Second of all, although it was expressed rather obnoxiously, expressing monetary amounts in $ makes practical sense in many contexts. Most people from non-U.S. countries will tend to know the conversion rate between their own currency and U.S. Dollars; this is less likely with other currencies.
That said, given the time frame of this particular case, converting to $ wouldn't make it any easier to relate to current values of the currencies
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence
Gutenberg didn't invent the printing press (which had been in use for centuries) or moveable type, per se, but he did invent the process and key technologies which made books ubiquitous. His most important inventions included the manufacture of mass-produced, moveable metal type (using his process, a single metalworker could produce thousands of metal letters a day), in addition to printers ink (which is quite different to traditional ink), and made large-scale printing possible.
At the end of the day, Gutenberg clearly was the inventor of `printing', meaning the process which allows written documents to be mass-produced. Of course, modern desktop publishing has made that process largely obsolete, but it had a fine run while it lasted, and was certainly one of the most important developments in the history of the world.
The man was a master of the art of Social Engineering. Don't know if he ever put it into actual practice but, he did get the theory right.
"PROFANITY is the inevitable literary crutch of the inarticulate MOTHER FUCKER." -- some PC user
Uh, I know how /. readers like to use the word "geek" in its new meaning, but do y'all know what it previously meant (and still does)?
A carnival side-show performer who bites the heads off of live chickens. Geek!
Now disregarding that meaning, I certainly think we need to credit Edison, Einstein, Leonardo, Galileo, Tesla, and all those other great geniuses and hackers!
- Kurt Gödel, whose incompleteness theorem proves that there is a limit on what computers can do
- William Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain, inventors of the transistor
- JFK, for insisting that we "send a man to the moon, and return him safely to the earth"
- Jack Kirby and Robert Noyce, who (independently) invented the integrated circuit
- John McCarthy -- while John Backus was inventing Fortran and Grace Hopper was inventing Cobol, he came up with Lisp. While Backus and Hopper certainly deserve their own due, it still boggles me that a language like Lisp traces its roots right back to the earliest days of high level languages.
BTW, I would highly recommend computer.org/history as a very cool "History Of Computing" website.150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for slashdot.sig (129323052 bytes).
Word Frequency
tesla 36
turing 28
Einstein 26
Newton 24
vinci 22
Copernicus 13
leonardo 11
edison 11
Linus 9
Gutenberg 9
Galileo 9
Babbage 9
_________________________
Mathmatical Genius, came up with an idea for a programmable computer during WWII, drew up designs for a machine to decrypt enigma messages need I say more?
distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes!!!
Actually, the often ignored but highly advanced Asian cultures (mainly Chinese, I believe) had recognized the concept of a number zero before the year 0. Eventually the idea found its way to Europe where people mentioned above quickly stole it and took credit for it.
Hey, maybe there is something to be said for patents on obvious ideas.
Being from Tech (Caltech that is) I just couldn't help but correct the spelling..
he most likely bought it at the corner from some dutch guy selling imported contraptions...
(substitute "probably" for "most likely" and note how less reputable the statement seems. when I say "probably" it sounds like I'm guessing. when I say "most likely" it sounds like I'm quoting a leading source on the subject)
Then again, I could be wrong.
One who through a high degree of intellegence, makes a nontrivial addition to the human body of knowledge.
Note that being "picked on" and mocked is not part of my criteria of being a geek. This is common but not necessary.
So here are my "top ten geeks" from the 20th century on back.
- Albert Einstein - Two words : General Relativity.
- Nikolai Tesla - For the same reasons cited in other posts. The man was brilliant.
- Isaac Newton - The boss of classical mechanics and calculus. I don't think this one can be argued.
- Henri Dunant - Founder of the International Committee of the Red Cross. He's contribution wasn't through his invention so much as observation. His work through the ICRC was instrumental in the work towards the Geneva and Hague Conventions and the "humanization" of war. Though he was no genius, his observation was non-trivial, and helped to make war much less barbaric.
- Blaise Pascal - An outstanding scientist and philosopher. Everone has heard of Pascal's wager.
- Galileo Galilei - He was brillant, albeit very stubborn. In the end however he won on both counts - he was right, and managed to avoid direct ecclesial condemnation more than once.
- Matteo Ricci - The famous missionary to China. In addition to theological studies, his knowledge of astronomy, mathematics and geography captured the facination of Imperial China.
- Leonardo DaVinci - Architect, artist, inventor and a whole lot more. There was little this man couldn't wrap his mind around.
- Roger Bacon - Philosopher, thologen, scientist. You name it, this man studied it.
- Thomas Aquinas - His work systematically covers the issues of theology and ecclesiology. His masterpiece Summa Theologica is probably one of the most comprehensive theological manuals ever written.
I tried to keep the focus out of the 20th century. Newton and Dunant are 19th, Pascal and Galileo are 17th, Ricci 16th, Bacon and Aquinas 13th.freud
i know he's not very politically progressive, but he sure got people thinking and was unconventional.
----- --- - - -
jacob rothstein
jacob rothstein reed college
All modern computers are "von Neumann" machines: one memory for program and data. A brilliant man.
FYI:c t.html
http://www.tiac.net/users/bruen/newton-effe
An additional problem with Gutenberg is that the Chinese had invented movable type and most other aspects of printing centuries earlier. At most Gutenberg was important in popularizing printing; and what's more there were many others doing the same right around the same time in Europe (it is unclear exactly who was first). Benjamin Franklin had a well-rounded career in a variety of scientific, business, and political areas. George Washington Carver invented quite a few of the plant byproducts we take for granted today. No-brainers that everyone else mentions too: Da Vinci Newton Tesla Einstein After this it gets a bit thick, with dozens of great mathematicians and scientists to choose from. I think it is important to pick those with contributions in either a broad field or multiple unrelated areas. Other strong candidates: Kant Pasteur Marie Curie Edison Feynman Bardeen
Think about this. Gutenberg was the one who made the printing press a practical invenion by introducing movable type. This fact is what kick-started the freer flow of information, which is how we humans have come to be defined. daVinci, Curie, Einstein, Hawking, Torvalds... all great in their own respects, but had Gutenberg not come before them they would be nothing. After Gutenberg, then Alexander Graham Bell, no so much for the telephone as the telephone line. Think of just how many devices now depend on telephone lines. Also consider this: while a telephone line may have more wires n it now, the basic ideas haven't changed since the device was first invented. Now that is impressive. After Bell, then Babbage. The one whose ideas would later inspire the modern computer. Only the first of his three machines (Difference Engine, Analytical Engine, "Dream Engine") were ever built, but the ideas carried on. After Babbage, then A and B (whose names I can't remember, but they built the A-B-C, the first electronic computer, predating its more famous descendant the ENIAC by one or two decades). Then the people behind ENIAC, who made the term a household word. Then Admiral Grace Hopper, who helped with the first programming languages. Then the inventors of the transistor, then the the microprocessor. I'm sure you see where I'm going here. Keep the list going, and you'll reach the original writers of UNIX, the Xerox PARC team, Jobs and Wozniak, and so on until you reach Torvalds. The point: The top geeks of this century have done great things indeed, but we shouldn't forget who made these possible. And it all started, more or less, with Gutenberg.
...was when he blacked out the city of Colorado Springs. He had a special power hookup from the city for his experiments, and was at one point bouncing electromagnetic pulses into the earth at its resonant frequency and producing lightning coming *up from the ground* for several hundred feet. But the lightning eventually jumped across the insulators in his power connection and fried the power transformer, causing a city-wide blackout.
Colorado Springs is still a very interesting place, between the witches, cattle mutilators, Tesla fanatics, old printer's home, CSOC, NORAD, and a number of fundamentalist Christian publishing houses. A little of everything. Anyway, Tesla is a shoo-in.
I had to study that mofo in my history class. I tell you - all he really did was add a page to my history book.
I hate to be the discordant note here, especially with all the great suggestions as to the Top Ten, but...
:-)
:-p )
Has it occurred to anyone else that we may be taking this whole "geek" thing a bit far? I mean, sure, there have been a good number of geniuses, of which many were oppressed or ignored, etc. But it seems as if we're slapping this "geek" label on anyone who made a name for themselves in a non-"popular" area. Especially if they were ignored at first, or oppressed at some point (which many were). It's as if we're this big self-conscious group looking for validation, saying "hey look! so-and-so-genius was ignored and unpopular, so hey I'm like them!". This, despite the fact that we know so little about the lives (especially of a personal nature) of many of these millenial "geeks". We don't know, and often don't have the information to make a good educated guess, as to whether they would have even agreed with the label.
I guess this kinda ties into what I see as a certain ambiguity as to the meaning of the word "geek" today. You've got some people using it to refer to any unpopular or outcast person; others who use it to refer to just about any intelligent and usually motivated individual; and some who mean some mix of the two. How to know which is meant?
So, my question to you all is, am I making any sense here? Does anyone else see something a little odd in this latching onto every genius and referring to them as a "geek" (whatever that means)? Anyone think I'm full of hot air (if so, do try to enlighten me
(BTW, I'm an engineer not a pyschoanalyst, so forgive any psycho-babble
Fermat's last therom took 350 years to solve with proof.
x^n + y^n = z^n has no solutions for n > 2 while x,y & z are integers. No proof given.
If Fermat lived in our time no doubt he'd be the best obfuscated C programmer ever, no comments, no reasoning.
And in reality nobody else has probably caused such great interest in mathamatics.
It's turtles all the way down.
Take a look here at the Smithsonian to see how Edison is basically given credit for the total use of electricity in the world! Wow!
-Michael
10. Thomas Jefferson: He might not have been a geek like we think of them, but he did basically form the structure of our government. And he also liked to play around with Building (anybody ever been to Montecello? A true geek house).
:)), telescope, etc....
9. Ken Thompson: Invented C, made UNIX a truly multi-platform OS......
8. Gallileo: Defended Science against the church. Proved the helio-centric theory.... Made first glasses (this alone should clinch and `geek' title
7. Linux Torvalds: Made open-source software popular.... 'nuff said.
6. Michael Faraday: Try having todays computer's without knowing the laws of electricity....and on that same note -
5. Benjiman Franklin: Didn't fear the truth. Mapped the gulf stream. Disproved many superstitions held true of the day. Did things that seemed really stupid to everybody else (think standing out in a lightning storm with a kite....)
3. Tie!! King James I of England) and Gutenberg: The first made a whole lot of information, considered sacred at the time and bad for general knowledge, open.
As for gutenburg....printing press. He used machines to make his life easier, what more could you ask for in a geek? (oh, yeah, and helped spread information to everybody, not jsut the privilidged class....)
1. Well, let's see who have we left out? Oh yeah, Newton and Einstein.....
Newton basically proved, through math (very geeky), that the universe wasn't a unpredictable, un-understandable place. He invented Calculus. He came up with some laws of mechanics very accurate unless you are in very extreme situations, only to be proven wrong by Einstein. Again, no formal training in deep theoritical physics. Came up with relitivity without scientific proof, or anything other guiding.....
(note: The reason Newton and Einstein tied was becuase, Einstein himself said, "I have seen farther then anybody before becuase I have stood on the shoulders of giants." Without Newton, we might still think gravity was a whirlpool and the orbits of planets couldn't be predicted. Most definitaly Einstein couldn't have done what he did without Newton, and Newton's equations are still very valueable, unless you're dealing with black holes, going 99.999% the speed of light or trying to understand the orbit of Mercurey....)
Just my $0.02
--Justin Mitchell
"2nd Place is a fancy word for losing" --Bender (Futurama)
The creation of COBOL isn't what gives Grace Hopper a place in a top 10. The creation of COBOL is just a result of her pioneering work on the concept, and implementation of early compilers. When she first starting with computers, there were no compilers, or higher level languages. But the result of her work shaped the computing world as we know of to a large extend: high level languages and compilers. Without her, many of the people on /. wouldn't have the job they have now. And that ears her a place on the list.
-- Abigail
I think it was pretty amazing what Gallileo went through to get his point across. Then again the church had always murdered and desecrated scientists and heretics. I'd have to say he ranks pretty high on my list.
How about Rob Zubrin creator of the Mars Direct plan and founder of the Mars Society. When we get to Mars it will be thanks to the work of this man definetly worth the title of geek.
I haven't seen Stephen Hawking listed here, but I think he'd deserve the "honor." Maybe he wouldn't be considered a geek, but still. This page should convince you.
Please send all hate mail to: 2135 N. Kenmore, Chicago, IL 60613
1. You began a sentence with the word 'And', a definate no-no in the English language.
2. Regarding "...right now, too, eh?", do you really need that first comma? Is 'eh' really an appropriate word to use?
(you do know what they say about those living in glass houses, right?)
You know the reason why we occasionally misspell things or otherwise use improper grammar? Because we don't care. The use of language has a single purpose, to communicate an idea. The fact that you automatically assumed we meant Godel (lacking an umlaut for the sole purpose of spiting you) means that the sentence performed its task perfectly. Ditto with the other 5-6 messages you or others like you have insisted on replying to with snide, elitist spelling corrections.
It's sad to think that there are actually people out there who get some sort of thrill whenever a Slashdot post pops up with a misspelling, as they get to correct someone's usage of a word. I'm not sure whether to attribute this to the lack of a life or simply a case of obsessive compulsive disorder.
Regardless, you need to understand that we simply don't care. The idea is presented, understood, etc. I have no idea why so many Europeans have it in for America and its residents.
Anyhow, I hope my fellow Americans will understand that you are not representative of the European community.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
One of the most important attributes of geek gods is the amout of persecution they have gone thru. Come on, which self respecting geek would not like to get persecuted. One that parameter I guess Kepler would come very high up. He was killed! right! And what about Galileo. And without these guys, all you slashdotters in the US would never have been there becos you would have fallen off the earth's edge. Something to think about.
O this learning! What a thing it is - William Shakespeare
1. Not everyone's parents are oppressive. Some love their kids, no matter what, and let them be themselves.
2. Not all of society originates in a church.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
http://www.alexchiu.com Not only does he declare everything we know about physics, biology, astronomy, geology and medicine completely wrong, but he's invented an eternal life machine, and Karl Marx was the Anti-Christ. He's either completely schizophrenic, or he's actually on to something. Take a guess.
If you don't understand what he means, then who is the true idiot?
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
Lets nominate Frankenstein for the ultimate hack.
/dev/eskil ---
DTP has not made gutenberg-syle printing obsolete. The printing press is still around, and I do not see it going away any time soon. DTP has just replaced some of the most tedious parts. The only are that DTP has surpassed gutenberg is in one-off, customized printing. Charles Bartley
Eric
--
"Free your code...and the rest will follow."
Be who you are...and be it in style!
Well, I would have to say that the most influencial person ever was whoever came up with the idea of the hammer. It is the primary tool in the creation of all other tools and simple devices. Simple devices lead up to more complex machines and so the trend continues. Gutenburg made the english language concrete, up till that time there were no really set spellings for words, and often it was possible to come across different variations of the same with when reading between different authors before him. The virgin queen, queen elizabeth was a bit more influential than him, she encouraged writers and scientists and such to excel, and they did. For writers throughout the centuries, Keats would probably have to take the cake for his literary genius, too bad that his best work only last a handful of years before he died of TB, admittedly, if he hadn't known that he was dying, there is a very good possibility that he never would have taken an influencial newspaper editors advice to start writing..... Scientifically..... by far Newton takes the cake. Isaac Newton is by far one of the most intelligent men who ever did. He came up with the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus in a matter of about 4 hours, and hadn't even seen math at all until 3 years before he came up with calculus. At the time limits were being used and ppl had realized that they were very important, and a few ppl knew of differentiation, and what it could do, though, no uses were really understood. And about 2 or 3 ppl knew that antidiferrentiation (integration) existed, but they had no concept of how it was used or applied at all. But Newton made the leap that if the derivative of the integral is taken, then the resulting equation is the origial. He also came up with the concept of rotating equations around the y axis, placing them into a 3d environment. Also, calculators today still use Newton's method of determining square roots, cubed roots, quad roots, etc. Without calculus, there would be now way possible that computers would have ever come into existance. Also, did his work in physics, the laws of relativity, light reflection and refraction, etc. He did all of his discoveries in an 18 month time span. Basically this just shows that he could prolly blow both Hawkings and Einstien away without any problem, don't me wrong though, both of those men are extradinarily amazing as well, without them, quantum physics wouldn't be the dreams that stuff is made out of. For politicians, i dont think that Franklin was all that great, he did cover a lot of fields, but most of the things he did were other ppls ideas, he just saw the uses for them, the Japanese do that with the technology that we create here in the US, so i guess he does have his place though. Thomas Jefferson on the other hand, he was a very very impressive man. In my opinion Jefferson is the most intellgent and important politician we have ever had. Conversely, his foil, Alexander Hamilton gave him a reason do such great acts. Hamilton himself impressives himself, i wouldn't say that he is best that we have had, but he is deffinantly up there. I'm sorry i would give examples to back up what i'm saying about, but i have only gotten a couple of hours sleep for the whole week, and am quite exhausted. For those interested, read a whole lot of stuff on Jefferson, and Hamilton, then i would be more than happy to chat, the more that you learn about those two men, the more youll very likely be amazed. i hope everyone had a great millenium. andrew :)
I nominate the geeks with no name.
1. The guy that invented the wheel.
2. The person who discovered fire.
3. The person who invented speech.
4. The person who invented writting.
5. The person who invented math.
6. And just so I fit in Tesla.
Environmentalists are their own worst enemy. ~tricklenews.com
Tribute to "Mr. Hunt" and Defense of the "Pitiful Picky Ones" >>>> Tribute to "Mr. Hunt" When I was 16 years old, a very popular English teacher in my (American) high school taught us that it is just plain rude to correct people's grammar. > He pointed out that it is just one way of not listening. > It impedes the flow of impassioned, spontaneous ideas. > It keeps people without training/interest in grammar from speaking up. And with a wink, Mr. Hunt wisely pointed out that you might be excluding the more interesting part of the population that way. I have followed this advice all my life, I'm 40 now, it's led me to conversations with brilliant people that I would have stifled from the word "go" before. In fact, I'm happily married to someone from the "more interesting part of the population." And I occasionally begin my sentences now with "But" and "And"! >>>> Defense of the "Pitiful Picky Ones" You say: > I'm not sure whether to attribute this to the > lack of a life or simply a case of obsessive > compulsive disorder. I would put "grammatical scolding" down to a bad habit. To scold _publicly_ is egotistical for sure. But you have to be trained to it from a young age. Ego alone won't get you there. Pitiful Picky Ones were undoubtedly treated that way by people they admire, their parents perhaps. Then they indulge in it the way some others indulge in first-posting, or flaming. Maybe some believe they are being helpful... They should have had Mr. Hunt. Their lives would be richer for it. >>>> minnimouse
Von Brown is my all time favorite.
He was responsible 4 Germany's rocket development program in WW2 (V1 / V2) and later worked for NASA.
I'd have to agree with most of the previously mentioned nominees, but I'd have to say that geeks would be geeks without calculus. I therefor nominate Newton. 'Nuf Said.
Fight or flight its all the same
Live to die another day
--Ryan
Now there's my kind of geek!
see
http://www.newmedianews.com/022897/ts_hedy.html
if you don't know what she invented.
Tom
I nominate John Von Neumann and Gary Gygax.
Von Neumann built a solid framework for quantum mechanics. He also worked in game theory, was able to investigate spaces with continuously varying dimensions, and was one of the pioneers of computer science.
Gary Gygax, the one who brought us Dungeons and Dragons. What self respecting nerd has never killed an orc?
"And Gödel is still preferable."
g rammar/sentfrag.htm
This is what is known as a sentence fragment - in this case, it lacks a verb.
http://www.lynchburg.edu/public/writcntr/guide/
Beginning a sentence with the word 'And' is commonly considered bad grammar, and was beaten into many of our heads well before 6th grade. Some of the more 'progressive' teachers don't have a problem with it in informal writing, but most will cringe upon hearing it. I personally don't care, but _you're_ the fucking Gammar Nazi, not I.
To not recognize your mistakes makes you a hypocrite.
Regardless, you miss the point. In a sad attempt to ignore the rest of my post, you focus on a single small point that I made. You avoid my main point that it doesn't matter, this isn't a fucking essay. If you insist on trying to find a way to justify your anti-Americanism, why don't you focus on our policies or actions instead?
Once again, I state that a missing umlaut makes no difference at all in this thread - you understood what he meant, as did everyone else. To complain about it endlessly all over Slashdot only makes you look petty and pedantic.
BTW: You still haven't defended your use of 'eh', nor the overuse of commas.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
---
I personally don't care, but _you're_ the fucking Gammar Nazi, not I.
---
Grammar, not gammer. Oops.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
I dont see any reason for gender separation
in the "top ten" list. Both genders can be
added to the list.
I think that all of you are right but not really quite right. I say this because there is one person that qualifies as THE GEEK. THE ONLY GEEK. DAS ULTRA-UBERGEEK. His name is Andrew Wiles. What ??? you dont know him ???????? Why, he is the man who showed that "Fermat's last theorem" can be solved. For 350 years all the mathematians or mathemetics (I am not really sure how to spell this since I am Greek) in the world could not even get close in solving this x^n + y^n = z^n ->no solutions. It was the holy grail of number theory. For 10 years he was trying to solve this bitch and finnaly he did it in 1994. It was the greatest thing that happend in mathemetics in the last 350 years. Now THIS IS GEEK. The guy solved THE PROBLEM and he brought mathematics 50 years in the future. That is because he combines al of the higher nuber theories of the last 200 years in a huge parer 200 pages long just to show that this simple thing does not apply for any n. Please go and find some info on this and you will see what I mean.
'Nuff said.
Yahoo UberCategory:Bucky Fuller
John Logie Baird
Made a telephone systems as a young boy
Invented mechanical television, radar and fiber optics.
Made The first trans-Atlantic television transmission.
"THERE ARE BETTER THINGS IN THE WORLD THAN ALCOHOL, ALBERT"-Death
42
Stephan, Liz didn't send any e-mail message, anything. What to do?
Catalin
-- We provide Zope consulting from US$ 25 hourly!
Einstien simply has to be included. Enough said.
:-)
Same for Turing.
Feynman is up there. Pauli too. Strangely, I'd also add Ghandi to the list, perpetrator of the ultimate social hack, someone who made the future happen by living it just as hard as he could.
There are so many. Descartes. Bose. Schrodinger. Planck. Euler. (or was he too early?) Mandelbrot. Tesla. Fermi. Escher. Godel.
More recently and closer to home, The Woz, John West of DEC, (see: Soul of a new Machine) Ritchie and Kernigan. David Braben. Tim Berners-Lee. Bill Joy. Jaron Lanier. And of course, Donald E Knuth.
John Postel. Lest we forget. The whole IETF and W3C, for that matter.
Srinivatha Ramanujan.
Damn, I hope I spelled that right.
Without a doubt the greatest mathematician ever. His story is one of brilliance and tragedy. From a single old mathematics textbook, he extrapolated the entire of western mathematics, and went a hundred times further. Superstring theory depends on some of his math. And there are still notebooks full of his work which haven't been fully understood. He died young. Too young. Such loss is inexpressible.
Another brilliant but tragic geek is Taniyama, of the Shimura-Taniyama conjecture (again, I hope I got that right) which was recently finally proved, and formed the keystone of Fermat's last theorem[1]. He committed suicide.
For my part, I'd take Newton off any list due to his very ungeeky behavior outside physics[2]. Shockley is another I waver on. He invented the transistor, but wasn't very nice about it.
There's too many. The problem is we all stand on each others shoulders, all the way back to Aristotle. I'm reminded of a french mathematician priest who's enduring contribution to math was his letter writing, corresponding with dozens of mathematicians like Fourier, passing ideas and problems from one to the next. I don't remember his name. As a rule, most people don't either. I suspect the greatest geek of the century is one who made their mark in the same quiet, unobvious way. Their ideas so natural and obvious after the fact that no-one even wondered where they came from.
I say, leave the number one spot empty. Let it stand unfilled because we'll never be able to give it to the person who deserves it most.
~ Orinoco
[1] It's basically a mapping system which joins together two huge areas of mathematics. The reason it's important is that impossible problems in one domain can now be 'ported' across to another, solved there, and ported back.
[2] He was a cruel and vindictive man, who went out of his way to destroy the reputations of rivals. Brilliant, yes, but a nasty piece of work. I'm not surprised that people sat in trees and dropped fruit on him.
Jeremy Lee | Orinoco
- Tesla may have been first but Marconi succeeded in making wireless telegraphy popular. He was the first one to sell wireless telegraphy commercially and in a larger scale.
- Marconi worked hard to improve wireless transmission, but he was not the only one. Definitely he was the first one to send a morse signal across the atlantic, but he broke many other distance records the years before. To call Marconi a thief is very much unjustified.
Braun can be credited a lot for the theory, Hertz was the first to do wireless telegraphy without knowing it, Popoff created a receiver and made transmissions as well, Tesla was first to register a patent, and Marconi was constantly increasing the range of these devices from a kilometer to the first transatlantic broadcast between 1895 and 1902. There is no single inventor for the radio, even though Teslas part may be highly underestimated.--
life would be much easier if you could have a look at the sourcecode
Get over it. Geekhood is above gender and anyone bothered by such segregation is obviously NOT a geek. Go away.
Whoa! That's two compressed into one! There's Rudolf Diesel and then there's Nikolaus Otto. Kinda like saying Nikolai Edison, :))
Boojum
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
here
Boojum
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Umlaut does not exist in the English langauge. Any name that contains an umlaut when rendered in English is a transliteration and is thus subject to variable interpetation.
Some people I have not seen mentioned that I think deserve respect:
Henry David Thoreau - profoundly influenced political thinking in the 20th century.
Claude Shannon - brilliant physicist who extended the concept of entropy to information theory. It took people a LONG time to understand his ideas.
Josiah Willard Gibbs - developed what we call thermodynamics. First American to be awarded a Ph.D. in physics and in engineering. Another person whose ideas were so far ahead of their time that they took decades to be appreciated.
James Clerk Maxwell - Brought completeness to the understanding of electromagnetism. His work withstood the revolution of both quantum mechanics and relativity. His later notes show that he was flirting with ideas that were very close to a theory of relativity. Given a few years we would probably be talking of him rather than Einstein as the founder of relativity. Probably the greatest physicist between Newton and Einstein.
From the IEEE Microwave Symposium 1997: "In 1895 Bose gave his first public demonstration of electromagnetic waves, using them to ring a bell remotely and to explode some gunpowder. In 1896 the Daily Chronicle of England reported: "The inventor (J.C. Bose) has transmitted signals to a distance of nearly a mile and herein lies the first and obvious and exceedingly valuable application of this new theoretical marvel." Popov in Russia was doing similar experiments, but had written in December 1895 that he was still entertaining the hope of remote signalling with radio waves. The first successful wireless signalling experiment by Marconi on Salisbury Plain in England was not until May 1897. The 1895 public demonstration by Bose in Calcutta predates all these experiments."
Source
life would be much easier if you could have a look at the sourcecode
It is rumoured that he transmitted signals between two mountains 18 miles apart in 1866, 21 years before Heinrich Hertz did in 1887. There should be some documents around to support this. One I found right now: Dentist Hall of Fame. Critics say that he used clouds to transmit signals but others say his apparatus was quite similar to those of Marconi and others.
life would be much easier if you could have a look at the sourcecode
Einstein has got to be it. Relativity, the A-bomb (he wasn't even allowed to work on it...and yet he is almost entirely responsible for the manhattan project's success.)
For my money, Hawking and Newton are tied for second. - Side note: if you think Newton should be number one for trig and gravity...consider this - Einstein has worked on quantum theory and other disciplines that we haven't even begun to comprehend (two hundred years from now - physicists will be saying "holy shit! i just figured this damned equation out!!!").
Number 4. Galileo (for obvious reasons.)
Number 5. DaVinci (ummmmmmm.)
OK, those are my top 5. you can argue about the rest. BTW - if hawking isn't on your top 10 list. you REALLY need to re-evaluate it!
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Jeffery C McLean . No explenation needed ........ For creating 006666 [Slashdot Green] ....... Inventer of the GPF .. Umm thats classifyed [re:Krull invasion] .......... Inventing the Internet ... For not getting rich .For quitting his job [to start GNU and FSF but thats not importent] .......... For defining the avrage persons addatude tword technology for the next few decades [the folowers being Ludites] .. For doing absolutly nothing and doing it so well ............ For being the galatic scapegoat..
Cmdr Taco
Bill Gates
Kirt [the Pope]
Al Gore
Linus Trovolds
Richard M Stalmen
Mr Lude
Jason R Vacodon
Satan
Refrence: Jason R Vacodon:Fictional, Jeffery C McLean:Auther of this top 10 list
I don't actually exist.
William Thompson (later raised to the peerage as Lord Kelvin) did huge amounts of theoretical and experimental work on Thermodynamics, Electromagnetism, as well as inventing the reflecting Galvanometer that made undersea cables practical (he made pots of money from this too...)
He was a definitive geek - on his honeymoon in Switzerland he measured the temperature at the top and bottom of the highest waterfall he could find to confirm the conversion of potental energy into kinetic energy.
Tycho Brahe spent his life making extremely accurate measuements of the positions of stars and planets, before the invention of the telescope. Without these data, Kepler would not have had the information to formulate the theory of elliptical orbits, which Newton later explained. He had an artifical nose made of gold because he lost his due to congenital syphilis.
Finally, if I can extend back a few more millennia, I'd like to put a word in for Epeus (sometimes spelt Epeius), who was the greek engineer who designed and built the original Trojan Horse.
Can we get a little diversity? Woops. Didn't mean to change the topic.
Don't be an idiot.
/. without making the most insulting comments possible.
/. I am forever laying to rest the concept of the sophisticated, cosmopolitan European in my mind, and replacing it with the obvious facts put forth by these postings as to the true nature of the psyche of a European.
I find it incredible that Europeans cannot post on
Not only is this poster incorrect in his criticism, but he manages to expose the fact that he is a boor who cannot communicate without being insulting in the process. The original poster is absolutely correct - there are no absolutes in transliteration.
If this is the typical European reaction to something as simple as a diacritical mark, there is no doubt as to the genesis of their many wars - complete provincialism and intolerance of any way of doing something slightly variant from their own.
After seeing the behaviour of Europeans on
Also, FYI, I seem to recall Nietzsche remarking in one of his books (probably Beyond Good and Evil) that the things that made the Germans such natural Ubermenschen was that they'd come up with Europe's two greatest inventions: gunpowder and the printing press. I guess that goes to show what an ass Nietszche could make of himself.
Much Love,
"S"HM
*****
(I refuse to spellcheck out of contempt for your belief system)
Off topic, but one of the cool things I have heard about the chinese written language is that it made it much easier to manage a huge, multi-cultural empire. When writing is by alphabet, it is generally phonetic, and you have to know the spoken language to understand the written language. But since chinese charecters represented whole words, once they taught a part of the empire reading and writing, all communications were compatible with the main chinese government. So one tax notice could be printed and sent to every corner of the empire, no matter what dielect or language was spoken there.
OK, off topic, bad kahuna.
...will work for Chick tracts...
Johannes Gutenberg
His invention of the moveable type press was a huge breakthrough in communications.
Albert Einstein
More than just a groundbreaking physicist, he was also well read, an excellent speaker and a scientist who felt no schism between his science and his religion.
Leonardo DaVinci
Set the definition of rennaisance man. He was more than just a great practical and theoretical inventor, he was a masterful artist, a one of a kind fusion of left and right brains.
James Clerk Maxwell
Maxwell made ground breaking discoveries in physics without possessing the necessary mathematical background to create some of the equations that we take for granted today. His ability to intuitively understand how some of the most fundamental pieces of the universe behave set the groundwork for a generation of physicists.
Isaac Newton
His theories of motion and gravity are still valid today. The work that he did centuries ago enabled man to send vehicles into space with pinpoint accuracy. And much of his work was done in his 20's.
Galileo Galilee
His studies of the solar system branded him a heretic by the church until near the end of the 20th century. Using simple equipment, he discovered moons around other planets, determined that the earth was not the center of the universe and performed important work on the nature of gravity.
Niels Bohr
His work on the nature of electrons led to improvements in spectroscopy and ultimately to the atomic bomb and nuclear power (for better or worse).
Alan Turing
He performed some of the most fundamental work that led to the development of computers. He had the genius to envision the modern computer as a device with as many purposes as there are programs.
Nikolai Tesla
AC power, early radio, efficient transformers, flourescent lighting, Tesla was the physic's answer to Thomas Edison.
2) unknown Islamic mathematicians and historians (preserving classical greek works during the Dark Ages, the sextant, etc)
3) Einstein
4) Isacc Newton
5) Malthus (early genetics/heredity research)
6) Marie Curie
7) Charles Darwin
8) Nikola Tesla
9) Galileo
10) Wright Brothers
Now, these are my picks based on historical impact. I suspect as additional research comes forward, these would change to include more people from say Africa or China. This is just what my schooling emphasized, YMMV
--Humpty Dumpty was pushed!
Or possible the great Hardy himself. I heard it said that all anecdotes about mathematicians are told about Hardy because mathematicians have such rotten memories, Hardy's is the only name they can remember.
Some guy posts, flames himselfas an Eurotrash idiot, and starts off a fight between American and British anonymous cowards.
Huh?
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Truly. One of the great unsung inventors, this guy invented television in his attic, from cardboard and broken junk (trust me, there are photos of the rig), and proceeded to perfect it so it could work clearly across an ocean. The big companies wanted to take credit for the coveted title of television's inventor, so he kept on getting screwed over.
Why do you think you never hear of the inventor of TV?
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It's Wernher von Braun, I dunno if being the inventor of the V2 should earn him too much.
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Ada invented the concept of the programmable computer, then worked out the rules for computer programming. W/o her, we'd all be punching on nonprogrammable calculators.
Blaise Pascal made a machine that subtracted, one that added, one that multiplied, and one that divided. Put them together and what do you get?
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I should mention that she's also known as Ada Byron. Some posts below refer as that, it affects the tally...
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I don't think he's doubting Jesus' historical existence, just J's followers' ability to prove it all amounts to anything. I'm God (or at least his son, violating some laws of monotheism), prove I'm not.
/.ers respect free speech.
IMHO, religion is the operating system of the mind and doesn't need to be based on truth/logic. Mebbe it doesn't matter if I'm not God, if it works for me (OK, bad example).
IMHO, eastern religions (Hinduism, Buddhism) are far superior in morals, consistency, and logic to Christianity, which (as a historical fact) rose as a result of (as a Roman-government-backed way to prevent) declining morals. While this is not a bad way for a religion to rise, it's a lot less holy than I'd fall for.
Having religion doesn't require you to believe in god(s), by the way-I consider myself an atheistic Buddhist. In fact, the concept of god is the most variable between religions.
As a final note, I will similarly nominate Siddharta Guatama, also known as the Buddha. His religion, based on careful consideration, has survived far longer than Christianity, spreads only thru peace (not bigotry and savage conquering), and all makes sense w/o the mythological gobbledygook that the Christian Church was always falling back on. What's more, he left a lot more behind - unlike the after-the-fact compilations that make the New Testament, the important Buddhist writings were from his time.
Buddhism is based on voluntary self-discipline, self-improvement, and universal love; Christianity is based on fear and love of only other Christians.
Now I'mgonna take a lot of heat for this... unless
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1. Buckminster Fuller
2. DaVinci
3. Kary Mullis (PCR technique)
Make it a big poll... put all these choices in it.
pronoblem
I nominate the three (or four) dudes in the X-Files. You know the guys.
I think the Geek of the millenium has to be Wiliam James Sidis, you can check out info on him here
I admit he's a good writer, and if I recall correctly, he has done some influential work outside of cyberpunk ficiton. However, if you're going to put a writer on the list, I think Asimov, is a much better choice.
Asimov is credited with inventing the word "robot" and "robotics". He also influenced actual people to start building robots, and the three laws of robotics probably exist in almost every robot in some form or another (even subconsciously in the mind of the designer).
I love deadlines. I like the "whoosh" sound they make as they fly by. -- Douglas Adams
Compared to other religions, Christianity rose with a lot of gov't support (prior to the fourth c, too). There were other competing religions that could have made it. The Catholic Church had its own doctrines, not necessarily based on the Bible. Is that counted as part of Christianity?
:v) (not to say the saints were faked, but I could). If I had a lot of charisma, I could get real people to believe me.
I'll bet I can produce a half-dozen people, or at least fake their existence
Faith in someone doesn't have to be someone special/holy; to turn an alcoholic into a missionary (in my view, being a missionary/preacher is "sinful", but I'll overlook that) only takes hope and effort on the alcoholic's part.
To say that Jesus had saints is giving Him a lot of credit; there are a lot of forgotten good Christians but there are even more forgotten good people who didn't need their religion (in the sense that Christianity is a religion) to inspire them.
The Bible declares non-christians to be heathens and therefore not part of mankind, ya can't deny the persecution of peaceful races by crusaders/overzealous missionaries. I believe a person's "soul" (to the extent that I believe in the idea of "soul", don't twist my words) consists mainly of that person's beliefs, values, and ideals. To preach to them and try to change that without some _really_ good justification (e.g., to prevent occuring harm to others) is to violate their soul.
I don't know that much about Christian doctrine, I admit, but there are a lot out there who'd rather hate non-Christians than love everybody and convert the non-Christians. Is it part of the doctrine to hate those who refuse to be converted?
And to dislike someone's values, in my view, is to dislike their soul, so to love them enough to change them is a paradox.
I dunno where yer getting the Popes being self-disciplined... but you say you've "seen where self-discipline goes" (w/ your own two eyes) but I assume you've only read about the saints.
There is a kind of dark side to self-discipline, which is self-loathing. It's all done for self-improvement, and a motivation is always needed for that. I suppose in that light the degree to which it's voluntary is arguable.
I'm not a fervent anti-Christian; I haven't been paying attention to the popes. I prefer not to judge any religion by its figures, just its people. The ends [the people] reflect the means so much that they justify them.
There are a lot of voluntary converts to Islam, too.
Religions can change after they've been introduced; there are a lot of peoples who wouldn't have accepted Christianity unless conquerors had already ripped their past culture to shreds. The conquerors killed with Christianity as their moral excuse; as a larger picture one side of Christianity destroyed the culture and another side replaced it. In the sense of the word "religion" that I use, these are two different religions. The side of Christianity that you argue for does do a good thing in this picture, it would make a good argument whether the two sides are inseparable. But that isn't really the kind of thing I care about.
I know next to nothing about real Eastern religions, I should admit that now.
Buddhism: I call myself atheist-Buddhist because I started with athiesm, and now I agree with every Buddhist I meet. The beliefs and values that I hold most closely match to Buddhism, of the religions that most people (read: I) know about.
Hinduism: I read some good things about this a while ago; I can't be completely against any religion that stresses grace and, above all, enlightenment over ignorance. But, I don't know the relationship between the religion and the caste system, etc. I know there's strife between some factions, don't know much more.
Oh! Just read back in yer comment, you said I think the gospel is worthless. I'm open to all suggestions; my religion is incomplete. Please write back!
This is my first actual theological discussion; forgive me if this's all improper form.
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Jes read back to my comment, you attacked Hinduism but I nominated Buddha! In fact, you didn't argue any of what I said about Buddhism's superiority! You have some 'spainin' to do! That is, if you wanna have a bigger discussion about this. ;v). Never met him anyway.
I'd like to argue religion w/ someone actually trained in theology, hard to come by for me. My sister's boyfreind's father (my future semi in-law, probably) is a minister, but he's an atheist too, or so I've heard
And: Ada Lovelace better make the Top 10 list, even if Siddharta don't.
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Coward -
I could argue the validity of relying on a state of being verb in this case, but I won't. Once again, you dodge the issue entirely. Purposefully steering around the main point of a discussion via the use of tangents is usually indicative of the lack of a real argument.
If you plan on replying again, please read the thread again and reply to my point in its entirety (without insults would be great - it doesn't make you look very good when you resort to them).
My point, in case you don't wish to look for it: Everyone who comprehends "Gödel" will understand "Godel". Missing umlauts don't hurt the communicative process, but your incessant whining does.
PS: While you're at it, I'll ask for the _third_ time for you to explain your use of 'eh' and that first comma. Being the self proclaimed genius that you are, you should have no trouble.
- Jeff A. Campbell
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- Jeff
i have noted that many people have mentioned Leonado and Michaelangelo. but i have not seen H.G Wells yet. He too was a visionary. Just read the Time Machine and you will see what i mean.
Considering it is the only non computer related book i have ever read other than Benchley's Jaws. i do hold some bias. =0)
And what about Gene Roddenbery? many og the small gadget on his "cerebral" Star Trek have came to fruition in one form or another. I believe they are now trying to create a transporter. He too is a true visionary. And perhaps even a geek!!
----[ Z ]----Sure Im A Lemming - But Ive Got Teeth
Someone may have already said this- there are a lot of comments here- but I didn't see Newton mentioned. Newton pioneered physics. Without him, most of the other people mentioned wouldn't have gotten anywhere. My picks (in no particular order) would have to include:
Newton - Physics
Einstein, Bohr - Quantum Mechanics (among others)
Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler - Astronomy
Edison, Watt, Volta, Marconi - Inventors
I tried to limit this list to people who laid the groundwork for many of the important discoveries you've all been mentioning.
"I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy." -Richard Feynman
I was just about to post on him, when I came across this one. The man is quite possibly the greatest mathematician of all-time; most of the principles key to Linear Algebra were first proposed by him and those who expanded on his work, vast amounts of standard algebraic formulas, extensions to calculus. The man, like Euler, churned out more mathematical formulas than most countries have.
:)
And beyond that, he was a genius. At the age of six, as a punishment for misbehaving, a teacher ordered him to add up all the numbers between 1 and 100 and give the answer at the end of the day. It took him about a minute (the formula is n(n+1)/2). A six year old.
(On that note, another man like that would be Mozart, who was writing symphonies in his single digits. But he doesn't really qualify as a geek, even though he makes my top fifty list as one of the most influential people of the past millennium [even though we have another year before the list can be finalized].)
These are the people who deserve a pocket protector clap---besides just Mr. *Blush* Torvalds 1. Mark Tilden (Godfather of BEAM) 2. John Bardeen (co-inventor of the transistor) 3. S. Joseph Begun (Inventor of Magnetic Recording) 4. Grace Murray Hopper (Who? This lady was credited with devising the first compiler -yep, a woman....later to become a senior advisor to DEC) 5. Albert Einstein (My hero, I don't need to say anything about this man.) 6. Nolan Bushnell (Inventor of Pong =)-Yeah that's right PONG.....gotta problem?? j/k) 7. Chester F. Carlson (Inventor of the photocopier and electrophotography aka that thing that takes nice pictures of my butt....=B)) 8. Seymour Cray (Inventor of the Cray Computer) 9. Enro Rubik (The one and only behind Rubik's cube) 10. George de Mestral (Invented VELCRO) --------- With Love, The SeineThinker ---------------------------------------- Motto for life: "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed." - Albert Einstein
Truth like surgery, may hurt, but it cures. - Han Suyin, Chinese Physician and Writer
Feynman is one of the most underrated physicists (well, at least in the sense, that not many people know who he is). Einstein was a great man, but Feynman rates higher in my book (hell, on top of being a great physicist and an amazing lecturer, he was a damn good social engineer).
Although some of the following may not be geeks, that's only because they were able to infuse the public with interest in their work. In no particular order: Carl Sagan: Greenhouse effect of Venus, infused so many with the interest of science, I among many.
Isaac Asimov: He practically *invented* robotics!
Nikolai Tesla: Reasons mentioned many times above.
Charles Babbage: Computer Man!
Isaac Newton: Sure this guy's an alchemist, but he *discovered* gravity!
James Clark Maxwell: If not for him, we would never know of all the wonderful waves of energy permeating the universe.(Maxwell's Equations).
Arthur C. Clarke: Although he made a big doody when he placed another gigantic star so close to the Earth(2010, 2061, 3000), he invented the telecommunications sattelite!
Alexander Graham Bell: How many of you are reading this through your *telephones* attached to modems, on nice multiplexing phone lines that don't drench the world in seas of copper?
Albert Einstein: I think his contributions to cosmology have no need to be mentioned.
Galileo: Anyone who proved all of medieval England wrong along with ancient Greece and was forbidden by the Church until 1832 while developing the telescope in the process must be mentioned here.
I'd mention Copernicus here too, but he was of the first millenium.
Quid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
Anything said in Latin, sounds profound.
Though not generaly considered a "geek" he should califiy as well as several others have. He is responsible for books getting into the hands of many common people. This should be as important as the printing of books. Until him (and some others like him) Reading was only for the wealthy the common man did not know how to read and had no use for it because he had no acces to books.