The following are people that have through every fault of their own, striven to live at that intersection of Intelligence and Obsession that garners people the moniker of GEEK. Hopefully it is one that they would self apply.
What I marvel at about Woz is that he marvelled at hardware, at integrated circuits, and elegant design. He was always answering the question with the answer yes, and then wandering off to figure what he had really just gotten himself into.
You have to admire a guy with those communcation skills, along with the technical creativity to pull off the Apple 1 or even better the IO controller that he created.
What do you do when you are working along and all of sudden, your body turns against you? The kinds of vital research that Mr. Hawking is doing are so difficult that it is hard to imagine picking yourself up by your bootstraps.
But this is the true mark of a card carrying member of the geek club. He rebooted himself, used his disadvantages as strengths, and then leveraged technology to pick up the slack. In the face of adversity, he is a singularly great mind.
Now, if he could just finished that cybernetic body... Ahhh what the heck, just submerge his brain in a vat of nutrient solution. They could fly him to CERN, and interface him directly with the LHC.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is a woman that carries pico-seconds around in her bag!
From Wikipedia:
She conceptualized the idea of machine-independent programming languages, which led to the development of COBOL.
Her and Luca Pacioli would have gotten along really well! You have to be obsessed, to design a programming language. But she had an extra twist from the Spice Weasel, because she developed tools that made BUSINESS with computers a practical matter.
I guess you could say, that her focus had pointed her to where the money was. Last time I checked there is still a very large installed base of COBOL code. And the guys that maintain that code are some deep. hackers.
That sexy smart phone that everyone is waiting in line for? Wouldn’t have been possible with out ‘ol Guiglielmo. Besides a great first name, Mr. Marconi performed groundbreaking experiments in the internet of his day...radio. In 1900, seeking to capitalize on the results he achieved 5 years earlier with long distance radio broadcasting, he formed Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company Limited, and soon after patented "tuned or syntonic telegraphy". Leading to the unfortunate result of making people on the bus permanently crooking their necks at a 45 degree angle down, while they fiddle with their phones.
The best work you do is the time you spend scratching an itch. At least that’s how it is for hackers. Bell had a big itch to scratch.
From wikipedia:
Bell's father, grandfather, and brother had all been associated with work on elocution and speech, and both his mother and wife were deaf, profoundly influencing Bell's life's work.[2] His research on hearing and speech further led him to experiment with hearing devices which eventually culminated in Bell being awarded the first US patent for the telephone in 1876.[N 2] In retrospect, Bell considered his most famous invention an intrusion on his real work as a scientist and refused to have a telephone in his study.[4]
It’s ironic that his invention is now really at the heart of the internet. What was once a conduit for our voice, and our voice only has turned into a “series of tubes” that can transport just about anything we can imagine.
One thing that really sets Mr. Bell apart is his deep caring for the natural world and life. It was this caring for which caused him to replicate the work of scientists of his youth without even knowing it. He approached their work with gusto once he became aware of it. It was this perceived setback that is responsible for his greatest developments.
According to wikipedia: Edison is the fourth most prolific inventor in history, holding 1,093 US patents in his name.
I think that catnaps were the real innovation.
The Geekforce