, by
Dan Greenburg
Encyclopedia Americana staff writer Norbert WienerReceived Ph.D. from Harvard at age 18, subsequently founded field of communication science/cybernetics. |
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. |
Child of Japanese and Korean immigrants Sho YanoEarned PhD in biology at age 18 while attending medical school, from which he received an MD at age 21. |
Unemployed Californian Larry EllisonAfter being divorced by his first wife because she said that he would never amount to anything or make any money, started Oracle Corporation, world's leading supplier of relational database management software (Note to academic computer scientists: don't worry if you aren't sure what an RDBMS is; it isn't necessary for running Microsoft Word). |
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