Top ten nerds and geeks

By Chris Stevens on 16 November 2006, 5:11pm

6Pages

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Though not history's most impressive nerd, Bill Gates has come to quintessentially represent our modern concept of geekdom. His bespectacled face and quirky mannerisms are famous across the world. Gates founded Microsoft in 1975, and through a series of ingenious -- some say downright underhand -- manoeuvres, Microsoft went on to make Gates the richest man on earth. Gates has a long-running rivalry with Larry Ellison of Oracle. When Gates bought an F16, Ellison attempted to buy a MiG. And let us not forget he is now one of the world's most generous philanthropists.

Turing is regarded as one of the greatest cryptographers to have ever lived. Not only did he crack many German ciphers during the war, but he cracked the Enigma machine -- thought at the time to be an impossible task. Forget Kevin Mitnick, Turing was a far superior cracker -- he also invented the Turing machine, a forerunner to the modern microcomputer. Turing was hounded by authorities who were intolerant of his homosexuality. He died in 1954, apparently after eating an apple laced with cyanide.

Wozniak co-founded Apple with Steve Jobs. While Jobs was the entrepreneur behind the company, Wozniak took on the challenge of literally soldering together the first Apple in Job's garage. Woz apparently invented the Apple to impress friends at his computer club. He designed a floppy disc controller from scratch, met his wife on a Dial-a-Joke line he set up, and was the first person to buy a Segway PT.