Top ten girl geeks

By Chris Stevens on 21 November 2006, 4:54pm

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A huge movie buff in her youth, Hannah showed all the early signs of a hardcore geek. Said to have been extremely shy, and diagnosed as 'borderline autistic' according to the All Movie Guide, Hannah is a fiercely intelligent actress. She's starred in some of the most important geek movies of all time including Blade Runner and Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. In Blade Runner, Hannah played a replicant named Pris, a "basic pleasure model", who Harrison Ford's character, Deckard, hunts down and kills. Hannah has also designed two board games -- 'Love It or Hate It' and 'Liebrary'. You don't get a whole lot more geeky than that.

Hopper was the quintessential geek. Not content with inventing the Mark I Calculator, she wrote the first compiler (broadly, a piece of software that converts text written in a programming language into more efficient machine code). Her invention led to the creation of COBOL. Hopper's contribution to the world of computers cannot be underestimated: she pioneered the idea of using programming languages that bear some relation to the English language, and then using a compiler to convert these into a form that a computer can rapidly digest. While this idea seems obvious to any modern programmer, in Hopper's day it was a completely original philosophy. She also famously discovered a moth causing a computer to malfunction -- the first recorded case of a real computer bug.

Tereshkova began her life working in a textile factory and ended it as the first woman in space. It was her membership of a local parachute club that put her in the running when the head Soviet rocket engineer felt suddenly compelled to shoot a woman into the heavens. Tereshkova didn't begin her life as a geek, nor was she particularly geeky when she flew into space. After returning to earth, however, she graduated as a cosmonaut engineer, became a doctor of engineering and flew in the Russian Air Force. Tereshkova was pronounced a Hero of Russia, but perhaps the greatest honour bestowed is that she has a crater on the far side of the moon named after her.

And the grande dame of geekery, the prima donna of dorkdom is...