Top Ten Geeks of the Millennium? 525
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? "
DaVinci (Score:1)
How about (Score:2)
Richard Feynman
How about Charles Babbage... (Score:2)
Eniac (Score:2)
The guys at DARPA (Score:1)
top ten geeks (Score:3)
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.
woz (Score:1)
Legos (Score:1)
Da Vinci, Turing ... (Score:2)
Turing has to be in there
maybe M. Curie, Einstein, the guy who invented 0 (maybe that was the previous millenium
Wright Brothers (Score:2)
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?
It would definitely have to be... (Score:1)
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!)
Einstein??? (Score:2)
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?"
Re:Legos (Score:1)
Nikolai Tesla (Score:5)
My choices. (Score:1)
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 ;)
Darwin (Score:2)
Re:how about (Score:1)
Or Richard D. James (Aphex Twin), who builds his own keyboards and codes his own software?
Re:Da Vinci, Turing ... (Score:3)
Yes, it was. It was around 650 ad, if i recall correctly.
My Picks for Geeks (Score:2)
Gallileo (Yeah I spelled it wrong i think)
Tesla
Carl Sagan
Hawkings
Einstein
Newton
Liebnitz
Billie-boy (Score:1)
BG=business
Although the nerdy and shunned parts probably could fit.
my vote goes to... (Score:3)
other candidates imho would include leonardo da vinci, thomas edison, blaise pascal, and my dog waffles.
not necessarily in this order: (Score:1)
I can't believe no one's mentioned Tesla! (Score:1)
- 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.top ten (Score:1)
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?
more info (Score:1)
http://www.neuronet.pitt.edu/~bogdan/tesla/
How about.... (Score:1)
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.
More to add (Score:1)
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.
Don't forget Maxwell (Score:2)
Here's my 10 and only one is from the 20th Century (Score:5)
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" [byte.com] 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*?!"
Galileo (Score:1)
Of course, the world is flat. Just like my head.
And, everyone knows that the planets revolve around ME.
top 10 geeks (Score:1)
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,
Re: (Score:2)
Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662) (Score:2)
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)
Some more nominations... (Score:5)
Geek extraordinair (Score:2)
Re:How about Charles Babbage... (Score:1)
There are plenty to choose from (Score:1)
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?
Space Shuttle (Score:1)
Nope (Score:2)
Alan Turing (Score:1)
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.
Re:More to add (Score:1)
What did Linus Torvalds do that was so special? Why not list everybody that started an OS? Nate Williams, Jordan Hubbard, Rod Grimes, Bill Jolitz, Theo de Raadt, Steve Jobs...
Roger Penrose (Score:1)
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.
ALAN TURING (Score:1)
One of the founders of computer science. A man far ahead of his time.
Head over to http://www.turing.org.uk/ [turing.org.uk] if you'd like to learn more.
I'll be very disappointed if he doesn't get into the top 5...
my pick (Score:2)
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
Re:More to add (Score:1)
Indeed, when the place I work had an NT server colocated I found myself commuting to work at late hours quite often to reboot it.
No Gutenberg (Score:2)
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Ignaz Semmelweiss (Score:3)
Robert Goddard, the Wright Brothers (Score:3)
--Jim
Al Gore! (Score:2)
Re:my vote goes to... (Score:2)
e^(pi*i) + 1 = 0
This keeps the five constants (e, pi, i, 1, and 0) in the equation.
And yeah, he was a way math dude.
My nominations. (Score:2)
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.
--
My favorite geeks... (Score:2)
and if you still need names...
Tesla - Gotta love that coil! :) (Score:5)
From http://www.neuronet.pitt.edu/~bogdan/tesla/index.h tm [pitt.edu]:
Another site: http://www.apc.net/bturner/tesla.htm [apc.net]How 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
Re:How about Charles Babbage... (Score:2)
Babbage persuaded the British government to give him 17,000 lbs. (Wage at the time was 2lbs./week) to build his Difference Engine. When he had spent the money, the engine had still not been built. Instead of trying to finish the job he tried to get more funding for the government to create the 'Analytical Engine'. Since he had failed to produce any results, the government did not grant the funding.
When the Difference Engine was built nearly 20 years later, it was by two Swedish engineers, Pehr Georg and Edward Georg Scheutz at the cost of 566 lbs.
They managed to sell two of these devices, both to governments. The Engine was little better than a mechanical abacus and the mathematical tables of the time did a much better job at a lower cost.
Re:Some more nominations... (Score:2)
A Different Geek (Score:2)
That man is Ghandi.
How 'bout the beginning of the millenium? (Score:2)
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.
HH The Dalai Lama (Score:2)
He advances the Open Souce versions of politics, religion, and spirituality.
Russ
John Harrison (tick, tick, tick) (Score:2)
Re:Bill ? (Score:2)
Bill gates changed the landscape of his bank account on the backs of IT people everywhere.
He's a small man with petty ideals.
_________________________
Top Ten lists and Newton (Score:3)
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.
Re:Ok, you asked for it (Score:2)
He's a small man with petty ideals and vision.
_________________________
Re:Da Vinci, Turing ... (Score:2)
Re:How about Charles Babbage... (Score:2)
Lb = pounds weight. Its Lb to differentiate from L which was the old symbol for pounds stirling (Look at a £ sign, its a cursive L, crossed).
As for the difference engines, the Difference engine 1 was to calculate those tables accurately. That was its only purpose. He stopped making it because he was a bit of a perfectionist and wanted to make a more general purpose device. According to "The Code Book" the Difference Engine 2 would have had memory, and a processor which could handle IF..THEN and LOOP type structures.
However, not managing to get *anything* working after 10 years and £17,470 the government were understandably reluctant to fund a maverick.
However, they his method for cracking Vinegere ciphers in 1854 whilst the rest of the world considered them uncrackable until 1863. This gave the british an edge during the Crimean war.
Go away, troll. (Score:2)
Re:DaVinci (Score:2)
I might nominate one of the few people that didn't like Leonardo (due, in part, to an envy of the universal affection for Leonardo): A personal hero of mine, Michelangelo. Michelangelo was more the misanthrope than Leonardo. He could be difficult to get along with, bull-headed, occasionally a physical coward, envious and, I think, prone to complain a bit more than the average person. In short, unlike DaVinci and the other member of the triumvirate, Raphael Sanzio, Michelangelo was not always the life of the party.
Of course, I specified that I "might" nominate him. However, there are two reasons why I don't believe he would qualify.
First, Michelangelo was not a scientist, not even a naturalist, although he was curious about nature insofar as the knowledge of nature might improve his art (e.g. he dissected human bodies to study musculature and bone structure) I assume that part of "geekness" is an interest in science of some sort, and I don't believe Michelangelo had much interest in science for it's own sake.
Finally, both Michelangelo and DaVinci fail the "...proved everyone wrong" test. Michelangelo was an acknowledged genius upon completion of the "Pieta" at age 23 or 24. He was hailed as the greatest sculptor since the Classical age and his reputation only increased over time. I know less about Leonardo's young life, but I believe that he too was an acknowledged genius while still quite young. In other words, the western world immediately realized the genius of both men and there was no "...proved everyone wrong" about it: early on, both men set an artistic standard that lasted for generations.
Re:Some more nominations... (Score:2)
I might nominate one of the few people that didn't like Leonardo (primarily due to an envy of the universal affection for Leonardo): A personal hero of mine, Michelangelo. Michelangelo was more the misanthrope than Leonardo. He could be difficult to get along with, bull-headed, occasionally a physical coward, envious and, I think, prone to complain a bit more than the average person. In short, unlike DaVinci and the other member of the triumvirate, Raphael Sanzio, Michelangelo was not always the life of the party.
Of course, I specified that I "might" nominate him. However, there are two reasons why I don't believe he would qualify.
First, Michelangelo was not a scientist, not even a naturalist, although he was curious about nature insofar as the knowledge of nature might improve his art (e.g. he dissected human bodies to study musculature and bone structure) I assume that part of "geekness" is an interest in science of some sort, and I don't believe Michelangelo had much interest in science for it's own sake.
Finally, both Michelangelo and DaVinci fail the "...proved everyone wrong" test. Michelangelo was an acknowledged genius upon completion of the "Pieta" at age 23 or 24. He was hailed as the greatest sculptor since the Classical age and his reputation only increased over time. I know less about Leonardo's young life, but I believe that he too was an acknowledged genius while still quite young. In other words, the western world immediately realized the genius of both men and there was no "...proved everyone wrong" about it: early on, both men set an artistic standard that lasted for generations.
My picks (Score:2)
Re:Nope (Score:2)
--
Stanley Kubrick (Score:3)
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
The Woz. (Score:3)
Nominate Nicolai Tesla as Prime Nerd (Score:3)
I'm gonna take a lot of heat for this. (Score:2)
If you don't think he was oppressed, nerdy, ignored, and shunned, then boy do I have a book for you to read.
Re:I'm gonna take a lot of heat for this. (Score:2)
D'oh!
The List (IMNSHO) (Score:2)
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 ?
Mathematicians (Score:3)
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
Copernicus (Score:2)
Top geeks (Score:2)
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.
Re:My favorite geeks... (Score:2)
What, only half? You've got something against the scots? (My favorite scotsman would have me believe they invented everything.) 8^)
Re:A theological point... (Score:2)
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.
Consider John Harrison (Score:2)
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
Feynman! (Score:2)
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.
Millennium, guys, not the last century (Score:3)
If they're not known by a single name, they don't qualify for my list. (OK, you may not know Ignaz Semmelweis [igs.net] 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.
Isaac Newton (Score:2)
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.
John Von Nueman (Score:2)
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!!
Re:What the hell is the pound key? (Score:2)
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
Stats on this page: Word Frequency (Score:3)
tesla 36
turing 28
Einstein 26
Newton 24
vinci 22
Copernicus 13
leonardo 11
edison 11
Linus 9
Gutenberg 9
Galileo 9
Babbage 9
_________________________
Re:I'm gonna take a lot of heat for this. (Score:2)
"Okay, now prove it"
"Um... Err..."
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
Gutenberg. Definitely Gutenberg. (Score:3)
Sanity check... (Score:5)
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
What about lovable Fermat? (Score:2)
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.
Smithsonian doesn't know he exists (Score:2)
Take a look here at the Smithsonian [si.edu] to see how Edison is basically given credit for the total use of electricity in the world! Wow!
-Michael
Re:A theological point... (Score:2)
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
Re:I'm gonna take a lot of heat for this. (Score:2)
(I have a karma of 150+ -- I can be a jerk. -1 here I come!)
That's Rudolf Diesel & Nikolaus Otto (Score:2)
Boojum
Better Otto link (Score:2)
Boojum
Intellectuals in America? Since when? (Score:2)
Re:My Picks (Score:2)
Marie Curie?
Ada Lovelace?
Grace Hopper?
Any of these ring a bell?
(Leaving aside that the point of science is that gender and race don't matter as much as the ideas, so the idea of lauding someone as a "female scientist" is to me less impressive than lauding them as a "scientist".)
Re:I'm gonna take a lot of heat for this. (Score:2)
Ultimately, I can't prove anything. But I can tell you that there is very good evidence for Jesus.
Re:What "it" is... and more. (Score:2)
As for you being God: I'll buy that as soon as I see you or hear from a half-dozen sources that you rose from the dead and have said report confirmed by the holy spirit and believed by otherwise wise people for 2000 years. I'll beleive that as soon as I see faith in you turn alcoholics into missionaries; slave traders into preachers. Where are your saints? Jesus has many, most of whom will never be heard of because they were doing good for people who the world had decided didn't matter.
You also betray a gross misunderstanding of Christian doctrine. Nowhere does the bible say that we are to love only other Christians. We are called to love other Christians, but we are also called to love all mankind. Love them enough to spread the gospel. That you think the gospel is worthless is irrelevant -- we think it is worthwhile, and it requires a lot of effort and money to spread it.
As for voluntary self-discipline: I've seen where that route goes. Nowhere. I have yet to see any evidence that voluntary self-discipline will produce anything like the levels of character found in the Christian saints -- heralded and unheralded. Maybe you should pay more attention to the saints and less to the Popes (who were with only a few exceptions a miserable lot)?
Finally: historically, Christianity has not spread primarily through force. While there were some isolated incidents, we left spreading at the point of a sword to Islam and... Oops! Hinduism. (Or are you unfamiliar with Indian history? The centuries of holy wars between Shaivites and Vishnite? The thugee?) I used to be a Hindu monk (Sanyassin) -- I might know a bit more than you gambled for.