Spice Merchant Dhirubhai AmbaniAmassed family fortune of more than $60 billion, sufficient for his son, Mukesh, to build a 27-story private home in Mumbai. |
Science Fiction Author L. Ron HubbardCreated the religion of Scientology in 1950. 1998 membership: more than one million. |
Madras Clerk Srinivasa RamanujanAfter failing his school examinations, Ramanujan obtained a position as a clerk in the city of Madras. Before his death at age 32, made fundamental advances in mathematics including Riemann series, the elliptic integrals, hypergeometric series and functional equations of the zeta function. |
Encyclopedia Americana staff writer Norbert WienerReceived Ph.D. from Harvard at age 18, subsequently founded field of communication science/cybernetics. |
Programmed by Eve Astrid Andersson and Philip Greenspun back in the mid-1990s. If you're a nerd, you might find the source code useful.
Original Inspiration: How to Make Yourself Miserable, by
Dan Greenburg