, by
Dan Greenburg
Hartford Connecticut Insurance Executive Wallace StevensWon Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1954; best known for "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird". |
Viennese Pauper W. A. MozartComposed his first opera, La finta semplice, at the age of 12. |
University Dropout Carl Friedrich GaussBy the age of 21, he had constructed a regular 17-gon by ruler and compasses, the most major advance in this field since the time of the Greeks. Subsequently developed method of least squares, normal probability distribution, Fast Fourier Transform, and a non-Euclidean geometry. |
Tuberculosis Sufferer Niels Henrik AbelDeveloped group theory, proved the binomial theorem, and did important work in quintic equations and elliptic functions prior to his death at age 26. |
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