Corsican Lieutenant Napoleon BonaparteConquered most of Europe and Egypt. Emancipated the Jews throughout Europe. |
Former Community College Student Craig VenterDeveloped shotgun gene sequencing technique and founded Celera Genomics, a private company that raced ahead of the government-funded Human Genome Project. |
Encyclopedia Americana staff writer Norbert WienerReceived Ph.D. from Harvard at age 18, subsequently founded field of communication science/cybernetics. |
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. |
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