Philosophical Entertainer
Ex-priest turned popular voice of Zen and Tao: KPFA talks, The Way of Zen, LSD, a Sausalito ferryboat, three marriages and a bottle of vodka a day.
Mushroom Bard & Psychedelic Talker
Ex-hashish smuggler who co-wrote the guide to growing magic mushrooms at home, smoked cannabis daily for 35 years and lectured ravers toward a 2012 end of history that never came.
Media Theorist, Catholic Convert
A Catholic English professor the counterculture adopted as its oracle. He said the medium is the message, then let a book called The Medium Is the Massage prove it.
Planetary Scientist, Cosmos Presenter
Denied tenure at Harvard, he read Venus’s heat in radio waves and Mars’s seasons in moving dust, then took Cosmos to half a billion viewers. Wrote on cannabis as “Mr. X”.
Philosopher with a Hammer
A professor at 24, invalided out at 34, he wrote his books drifting between Alpine and Mediterranean towns until he collapsed in Turin in 1889. His sister then sold a misleading Will to Power.
Pixel Engineer Turned Photographer
He quit neuroscience for Apple, wrote the graphics that drew the Mac, gave everyone MacPaint, traced HyperCard to an LSD night on a park bench, then photographed polished stone.
Scientific Romancer, World Planner
A draper’s apprentice taught by Huxley who invented the time machine, then spent forty years planning the world: utopias, a bestselling history, eugenic lapses, a rights charter.
Exiled Jesuit of the Noosphere
Jesuit, stretcher-bearer and fossil geologist. Rome sent him to China and barred his books; his noosphere and Omega Point reached print only after he died.
Memex Dreamer, Wartime Science Boss
He built a mechanical equation-solver at MIT, ran America’s wartime science, then imagined the memex: a desk that remembers the trails you think along.
Juggler of Information
His master’s thesis turned Boolean logic into circuitry; his 1948 paper made information measurable. He also built a maze-solving mouse and juggling machines.
Augmenter of Intellect
A Navy radar technician who read Vannevar Bush and took up his question for life. In 1968 he showed the mouse, linked text and live video collaboration in one stage demo.
Logo Co-Creator, Piaget Veteran
An anti-apartheid South African mathematician who studied children with Piaget, then gave them a turtle and a programming language and let them give the orders.
Smalltalk & Dynabook Instigator
In 1968 he mocked up a notebook computer for children, then helped build Smalltalk at Xerox PARC. He has spent decades asking why computers still make deep ideas hard.
Interface Inventor, Dynamicland Lead
Ex-Apple interface prototyper whose demos made code, time and data visible, then the lead of a lab that moved programming onto paper, tables and walls.
Patron-Funded Interface Researcher
Built iOS interactions at Apple, led R&D at Khan Academy, then left in 2019 to rethink reading. Quantum Country, Orbit and a public notebook, paid for by his Patreon members.
Storyboard-First Director of Ghibli
A warplane-parts maker’s son and Toei union secretary who draws films into being without a script, refused Weinstein’s cuts and called an AI animation “an insult to life itself.”
Studio Boss of Mickey and Snow White
Went bankrupt in Kansas City, lost Oswald to his distributor, made Mickey with Ub Iwerks, bet his house on Snow White, fought a strike, named names to HUAC, died of lung cancer.
Measurer of the Breathing Cell
A Nobel experimentalist who measured breathing cells with manometers and poisons, caught tumours gorging on sugar, then insisted, wrongly, that damaged respiration causes cancer.
Biochemist of Combustion and Motion
Shot himself out of one world war and worked against Hitler in the next. In between he pulled vitamin C from Szeged paprika and made muscle-protein threads contract in a dish.
Microelectrode Maker, Pump Denier
Helped perfect the glass electrode that reads voltage inside cells, then spent seventy years denying the sodium pump. Lost his lab in 1988; an MRI pioneer’s firm kept him publishing.
Thyroid and Progesterone Contrarian
Blake scholar turned biologist who preached thyroid, progesterone and sugar against seed oils from a PO box. Adored online; rarely backed by trials.
Biochemist of the Working Muscle
Kant-reading psychiatrist turned muscle chemist who weighed lactic acid against heat, helped map glycolysis, then fled the Nazis over the Pyrenees.
Refugee Who Found Metabolism’s Cycles
Found the urea cycle in Freiburg, was dismissed in 1933 for his Jewish ancestry, then closed the citric acid cycle in Sheffield on minced pigeon breast muscle.
Biochemist of ~P and Coenzyme A
A Königsberg doctor turned refugee biochemist who wrote ~P for energy-rich phosphate, then revived a dying pigeon-liver assay with boiled extract and found coenzyme A.
Theorist Who Built His Own Laboratory
Wimpey shares bought a Cornish mansion and the freedom to claim respiration pumps protons. Two decades with Jennifer Moyle proved him right.
Physiologist Who Sold the World Stress
Rats on a cold roof gave him one syndrome for every injury. He made it ‘stress’, a word the world kept, then took tobacco money to say cigarettes relieve it.
Geochemist of the Living Planet
A mineralogist who weighed life as a geological force, quit Moscow University in protest, built academies through civil war and, at 77, set Stalin’s Academy hunting uranium.
Mythologist of the Monomyth
He taught myth at Sarah Lawrence for 38 years, co-wrote a skeleton key to Finnegans Wake and boiled heroes down to departure, initiation and return. TV made him famous after his death.
Philosopher of Recognition
A seminary student turned tutor, editor and headmaster who argued that a self becomes free only through others, then traced that through work, markets, law and history.
Ringmaster of the Feuilleton
Grandson of an enslaved woman, son of a general: he rewrote Maquet’s drafts into Musketeers and Monte Cristo, then spent it all on lovers and Garibaldi.
Novelist of the Sovereign Self
Born Alisa Rosenbaum, she left Soviet Russia on a visitor’s permit and stayed, wrote on Benzedrine, preached The Virtue of Selfishness and took Nathaniel Branden as her lover, then her enemy.
Philologist of the Perilous Realm
A Somme signals officer who invented Elvish before he had a story to put it in. Oxford’s professor of Anglo-Saxon built Middle-earth so his languages had somewhere to live.
Apologist Through the Wardrobe
Wounded at Arras, he spent decades sharing a house with his dead friend’s mother, left atheism for Christianity, then married Joy Davidman and wrote raw grief under a pen name.
Weaver of the Wheel
A Vietnam veteran and nuclear engineer who began a fourteen-book cycle of turning Ages, then left the notes and final chapter from which it was finished.
Star Wars Mogul & Toolmaker
A would-be racing driver until a crash, he made Star Wars, built ILM and the sound shops to finish it, bankrolled the sequels to keep control, then sold the lot to Disney.
Tastemaker and Taskmaster
An adopted Reed dropout who rated LSD among the most important things he did, took the Mac from Jef Raskin, denied his daughter Lisa, lost Apple and came back to put a computer in your pocket.
Dome maker, map maker, myth maker
Twice thrown out of Harvard, he built light structures and big stories: a mast-hung house, a fatal car, the geodesic dome and his own legend.
Chimp Watcher Without a Degree
She arrived at Gombe in 1960 with no degree and her mother for company, saw a chimp strip a twig to fish for termites, and gave her subjects names, not numbers.
Prince of Paradox
Fleet Street’s great paradox machine: Father Brown, Orthodoxy, cheerful brawls with Shaw and Wells, and a 1920 proposal that Jews in public life wear distinctive dress.
Psychiatrist of Dream and Myth
Zurich psychiatrist who timed hesitations in word tests, then mined dreams, myths and his own visions for an influential, contested psychology.
Comics Writer and Snake-God Magician
Expelled acid dealer turned writer of Watchmen, V for Vendetta and From Hell, who broke with DC over who owns a story, worships a hoax god and never left Northampton.
Media Ecologist & Crap Detector
NYU teacher who wrote with a pen, never used email, and argued that television turned news, politics and religion into show business: Huxley’s nightmare, not Orwell’s.
Reporter of Chaos and Information
A former Times science reporter who turned a meteorologist’s rounding error into a bestseller, co-founded an early New York ISP and fought for authors in the Google Books war.
Critic of Influence and the Canon
A Bronx boy who learned English sounding out Blake, then spent 64 years at Yale arguing that every strong poem misreads the poem it loves, and fighting for Shakespeare.
Renegade Priest Against Institutions
Vienna-born priest who ran a subversive Cuernavaca school for missionaries, then argued that schools, cars and hospitals pass a threshold where they disable the people they serve.
Architect Who Wrote a Pattern Language
Mathematician turned architect who wrote 253 patterns, built with Mexicali families and asked programmers what their patterns actually generate.
Gag Artist Who Drew Dragon Ball
A poster designer who quit, drew some 500 rejected pages, struck gold with Dr. Slump, plotted Dragon Ball a week at a time for eleven years and gave Dragon Quest its slime.
Rule-Maker of Hunter × Hunter
Walked away from YuYu Hakusho at its peak, then built Hunter × Hunter out of vows, games and cruelty, drawing it in bursts, latterly lying on his back.
Insect Collector Turned Game Maker
A Machida boy who caught beetles under stones grew up to direct Pokémon, a Game Boy game in which some creatures could only arrive by cable from a friend.
Draughtsman of Two Signatures
Jean Giraud signed his westerns Gir and his dreams Mœbius: Blueberry’s dust, Arzach’s wordless flights, and a serial improvised issue by issue in the magazine he co-founded.
Director of Collapse and Rebuild
Mecha animator who burned his own breakdown into Evangelion, survived the backlash, shot Shibuya on camcorders and turned Godzilla into a cabinet meeting.
Shapeshifter of Sound
David Jones from Brixton became Ziggy and the Thin White Duke, praised fascism in his 1976 cocaine years and later took it back, rebuilt in Berlin and released Blackstar two days before dying.
Life on Earth’s Writer and Presenter
Caught animals for London Zoo on camera, sold colour BBC Two with snooker and Civilisation, scripted Life on Earth before a frame was shot, then spent old age warning of collapse.
Antivirus Founder, Fugitive Showman
He gave a virus scanner away on bulletin boards and sold the fear that made firms pay, then spent the fortune on yoga, guns, Belize, flight, crypto touting and a Spanish cell.
Industrial Designer of Play
An industrial-design graduate hired to draw arcade cabinets, he gave Mario a moustache to save pixels, drew Zelda’s map beside Mario’s levels and rescued Pikmin with one flowchart.
Engine Programmer of Doom and Quake
id Software’s engine programmer, who kept asking what a PC could draw before the next frame, then took that measuring habit into rockets, VR and AI.
Builder of Odd Worlds
A visual-effects director who co-founded Oddworld Inhabitants with Sherry McKenna, then made a meat-factory worker’s escape a test of how many others he brings out.
Valve Boss, PC Gaming’s Gatekeeper
He left Microsoft after thirteen years, scrapped a mediocre Half-Life for a better one, then made every buyer of Half-Life 2 install Steam. His store now decides much of PC gaming.
Designer of SimCity and The Sims
Maxis co-founder who turned a level editor into SimCity, a burned-down house into The Sims and evolution into Spore, and is still chasing a game made of memory.
Programmer of Clockwork Worlds
A Scottish programmer who built Transport Tycoon and RollerCoaster Tycoon almost alone in assembly language, turning freight and crowds into small worlds you can read at a glance.
Browser Kid Turned Kingmaker
He co-built Mosaic as an Illinois student, turned it into Netscape, became the venture capitalist who said software is eating the world, and in 2024 backed Donald Trump.
Minecraft’s Original Builder
A King browser-game coder who posted a block game to a forum in 2009, sold it unfinished, let players steer it and walked away when Microsoft bought Mojang in 2014.
Stealth Auteur & Fourth-Wall Breaker
Turned an MSX2’s limits into stealth, a memory card into a mind-reader and a Konami exit into his own studio, then made a game about hauling cargo.
Engineer of Impossible Jungles
He met Jason Rubin at twelve and co-founded Naughty Dog. For Crash he wrote his own Lisp and, with Dave Baggett, precomputed what the camera could see so a jungle fit a PlayStation.
Director of Cartoon Mischief
Naughty Dog’s artist half since his teens, he made Crash readable at forty pixels, gave Jak a gun and a voice, then went off to run THQ and build Oculus’s games arm.
iPod Chief and Nest Co-founder
After a decade of handhelds that struggled to find buyers, he ran Apple’s iPod team, led iPhone hardware and co-founded Nest, which he left in 2016 amid reports of a punishing culture.
Sony’s Musician Executive
A music student who sent Sony a list of everything wrong with its tape recorder, got hired for it, then held out for a CD long enough for big classical works and backed the PlayStation.
Keeper of Quiet Giants
He makes you lead a girl by the hand through a castle, bring down colossi and feel uneasy about winning, and coax a feathered giant that won’t always listen. Silence does the talking.
Architect of Punishing Worlds
He took over a Demon’s Souls already in development and made it a school of death: worlds that kill you, hide their story in item descriptions and fold back on themselves.
Kirby’s Creator, Smash’s Director
He made Kirby float so beginners could finish, made Smash fighters fly farther the more they were hurt, then filmed a video course so other designers could learn how.
Puzzle Purist
He gave a platformer a rewind button and made the rewinding the puzzle, then built The Witness, an island that teaches its rules without a line of instruction.
DOOM’s Level Rockstar
The id co-founder who built DOOM levels and sketched Quake’s E1M1, then made Daikatana at Ion Storm and learned in public what ambition costs. He still makes new DOOM maps.
Maker of Interesting Decisions
He beat an ex-military pilot at Red Baron, co-founded MicroProse with him and designed Civilization with Bruce Shelley: the game of one more turn.
Rotoscoping Prince-Maker
He filmed his little brother jumping in a high-school parking lot and turned it into Prince of Persia. He kept journals the whole way, then drew his father’s flight from the Nazis.
Queen of the Graphic Adventure
She sketched a murder mansion at her kitchen table, had Ken code it and built Sierra’s adventure empire, from fairy-tale King’s Quest to Phantasmagoria’s sexual violence.
The Programmer Who Listened
A HAL programmer who rescued EarthBound by building tools, wrote Pokémon’s compression and became Nintendo’s president without leaving the keyboard. He died at fifty-five.
Novelist of the Divided Self
He fled seminary at fourteen, did seventy-two sessions with a Jungian analyst, published Demian under a false name and won a Nobel; the young found his books after his death.
Prophet of Soma and Mescaline
Half-blind at sixteen, he wrote Brave New World’s drugged utopia, took mescaline in 1953 and wrote The Doors of Perception about it, then asked for LSD on his deathbed.
Naturalist of Descent
A medical dropout who paid his own way on the Beagle, worked on natural selection for twenty years and published only when Wallace mailed him the same idea.
Steam Salesman of Soho
Birmingham’s buckle-and-button king bankrolled James Watt, sold steam engines priced by the fuel they saved and struck Britain’s copper coins by machine.
Ruthless Rate-War Tycoon
A Staten Island ferryman who priced rivals off the water, ran a route across Nicaragua, took payments to keep it shut and ended up controlling the New York Central.
Telephone Man, Enemy of Sign
Son of a speech scientist and a hard-of-hearing mother, he won the telephone patent over Elisha Gray’s same-day filing, then campaigned to keep sign language from deaf children.
Invention-Factory Boss
A railroad telegrapher who built an invention factory at Menlo Park, wired Pearl Street, lent his lab to electrocute animals with a rival’s current and sank his GE shares into an ore mill.
Assembly-Line Autocrat
He put America on wheels with the Model T and the moving line, sent inspectors into workers’ homes, spread antisemitic lies in his own paper and took a Nazi medal in 1938.
Steel Baron, Library Giver
A Scottish mill boy who built a steel empire, preached that the rich must give their surplus away, and backed Frick by telegram while Pinkertons and workers died at Homestead.
The Standard Oil Monopolist
A Cleveland bookkeeper who counted every penny, swallowed rival refiners with rebates and buyouts and saw the Supreme Court break up Standard Oil in 1911. Then he gave on a state’s scale.
Rearranger of the Heavens
A church canon who doctored colleagues, managed estates and wrote on money while quietly moving the Earth. The book came out as he died, with someone else’s disclaimer bolted on.
Stargazer Under House Arrest
He turned an improved Dutch spyglass on Jupiter, named its moons for the Medici to land a court post, then recanted before the Inquisition and lived out his days under house arrest.
Astrologer Who Found the Ellipse
An imperial mathematician who practised astrology, trusted Tycho’s data over his beautiful theory, found the ellipse in eight arcminutes of error and defended his mother in a witch trial.
Mathematician, Alchemist & Mint Chief
He worked out his calculus in the plague years, explained the planets, spent years on alchemy and prophecy, hunted counterfeiters at the Mint and steered the verdict against Leibniz.
Notation Genius, Newton’s Rival
A court librarian and diplomat who gave calculus its d and ∫, designed a calculating machine, called this the best possible world and lost a priority war that Newton refereed.
Emperor by His Own Hand
A Corsican artillery officer who took France by coup, crowned himself, wrote wives’ obedience into law, restored slavery and marched the Grande Armée to its death in Russia.
Architect of the Open Plan
He left his family for Mamah Cheney and built Taliesin; a servant burned it and murdered her and her children. He rebuilt it twice and hung Fallingwater over a waterfall.
Poet of the Tall Building
He coined “form follows function”, then wrapped a store doorway in cast-iron vines. After the 1893 crash cost him the big commissions, he ended up designing small-town banks.
Architect of the Unfinished Basilica
He designed with upside-down hanging chains, filled Barcelona with buildings that look grown, gave his last years to the Sagrada Família and was killed by a tram long before it was done.
Mad Man of Research
An Oxford dropout who cooked in Paris, sold stoves door to door and worked in British intelligence, then sold Rolls-Royces with a clock and shirts with an eye patch.
Think Small’s Agency Boss
His agency sold a Nazi-born Beetle to postwar America by admitting it was small and odd. He seated writers beside art directors and called cigarette advertising selling sickness.
Lawrence of Arabia, Aircraftman Shaw
An Oxford archaeologist turned raider of Ottoman railways, ashamed of Britain’s broken promises, who hid in the ranks as Ross and Shaw until a motorcycle crash killed him.
Poet-Minister of Weimar
Werther made him famous at 25, and Weimar put him in charge of mines and roads. He lived with Christiane Vulpius unwed for years and insisted Newton had colour wrong.
Bard of Empire
A Lahore newspaperman at sixteen and a Nobel laureate at forty-one, he wrote the Jungle Books and “The White Man’s Burden”, then lost his son John at Loos.
Poet of the Playhouse
A glover’s son married at eighteen to a pregnant Anne Hathaway, he prospered as a sharer in a London company and left his wife his second-best bed.
Philosopher of Living Things
Plato’s student and Alexander’s tutor, he studied the sea creatures of a Lesbos lagoon, asked why everything is as it is, and concluded that some people are slaves by nature.
King of Macedon & Conqueror
He razed Thebes, stormed Tyre, burned Persepolis and marched to the Indus, then died at Babylon at thirty-two. Every account of him was written by someone else.
Sage of the Empty Hub
A half-hidden name on a short book of paradoxes, about emptiness, water and yielding, shaped by copyists, commentators and translators.
Impresario of Humbug
He paid $1,000 to exhibit an enslaved old woman, rented a stitched-up mermaid, billed a Bridgeport four-year-old as an English general and called the method humbug.