, by
Dan Greenburg
Frail Lincolnshire Lad I. NewtonDuring an 18-month school vacation, developed calculus, inverse square law of gravitation, and laws of motion. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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