Geek Stars From Atkinson to Zappa

Ian Lamont writes "You probably remember reading about Brian May getting a PhD in Astrophysics, but may not know about the many other celebrities from the music, TV, and film worlds who have studied science and technology in college and grad school, or are simply serious gearheads who like gadgets, games, and other geek pastimes. Computerworld has identified about 50 celebrities who fit the bill, including Dan Grimaldi (Patsy Parisi, The Sopranos) who has a Bachelor of Arts degree in math, a master's in operations research and a Ph.D. in data processing; Rowan Atkinson, who has a master's in electrical engineering from Queen's College, Oxford; and Todd Rundgren, who developed an early paint program called Utopia. Other folks on the list: Dr. Demento, Montel Williams, Natalie Portman, Curt Schilling, and Huey Lewis."

Yawn

[evilviper]

This isn't so much "geek stars" as it is an exhaustive list of "Everyone in Hollywood that isn't mechanically inept."

Many actors majored in some field of science rather than art, and didn't flunk. Robin Williams plays video games and likes gadgets. Real big geek cred...

Quite a waste of time.

Zappa on music

[ThirdPrize]

In his book "The Real Frank Zappa" [amazon.com] released in 1989 Zappa explains his plan for the future of music distribution. He says that consumers arn't that interested in CDs or vinyl and explains how you could use the cable tv or telephone system to digitally transmit music (and cover art, etc) into peoples homes on a subscription basis. This was back in 1989, long before your interweb thing took off.

Um, Dr. Demento *not* on the list

[drphil]

Do the submitters actually RTFA? Dr. Demento's name was dropped in trying to put context around Prof. Tom Lehrer (not sure why you need to see Dr. D's name to understand who Lehrer is). BTW I think Dr. Demento has only a masters degree and was an A&R guy at one time - one of the least geeky jobs ever.

Re:Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually what is interesting is that very few of the people on this list ever publicly talk about their education or interests. We live in an age when kids are losing interest in science in technology and chasing the celebrity dream of fame and fortune. Many of these people could be good roll models to encourage kids back into science, technology and engineering.

Also, Masi Oka has a double in Math and CS, and worked at ILM. I don't care what you say: Hiro Nakamura is a real geek. He still consults for ILM for Petes sake!

Erdos-Bacon number

[Michael Woodhams]

I can't let this go past without bringing up Erdos-Bacon numbers. [wikipedia.org]

Natalie Portman has one of the better scores (Erdos 5 + Bacon 2 = 7). She did not (so far as I know) use her fame in her primary field (acting) to get preferential treatment in the other (science/maths.) There are scientists with a lower total, but I think they've all got an acting part on strength of their science fame (e.g. Stephen Hawking.)

According to Wikipedia, a few people have lower Erdos-Bacon numbers which appear to be 'clean', but I haven't heard of them before: Kiralee Hayashi (3+3), Danica McKellar (4+2), Barney Pell (3+2), John Platt (3+3), Karl Schaffer (3+2), Brian Wandell (3+2), Wendelin Werner (3+3).

Re:Yawn

[dido]

Apparently he's also a huge fan of Neon Genesis Evangelion, and managed to get an Evangelion toy to appear in his movie One Hour Photo [imdb.com] .

Obvious Missing Entries

[Mister Transistor]

There's Elvis Costello - former computer programmer who chucked it all for Rock 'N Roll...
(He kept the geek look but lost the career!)

Peter Gabriel is quite the computer nerd...

Joe Walsh of the Eagles - he's got a Ham Radio license...

And Jeff Foxworthy used to work for IBM, but I'm not sure how nerdy he was.

Re:A Bachelor of *arts* in Mathematics?

[bigstrat2003]

If you go to a liberal arts school, perhaps. The school I went to, Lawrence University, offers only BA degrees (well, also a B. Music for those who are in the conservatory), no matter what you study. I assure you that the math curriculum involves no asking how it makes you feel, and is good, solid, old-fashioned math. ;)

Re:blimey.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it is only a Bachelors. The University of Oxford "upgrades" all B.A.s to M.A.'s a year after graduation.
In Engineering (or actually, Engineering Science as they call it here), there is the M.Eng for undergraduate masters and for the few postgraduate masters courses, they are normally called M.Sc or M.Phil.
So don't be fooled when you hear of Oxford or Cambridge graduates with Masters, it is a big con!

P.S. How fitting that the captcha is ensnared...

Brian May

[BigBadBus]

Brian May *doesn't* have a PhD. He has submitted his thesis, but hasn't been awarded it yet. Get your facts right.

Re:Yawn

[Chibi Merrow]

Well I hate to use Wikipedia as a source, but there's lots of news articles that quote that she was named after Princess Zelda. Haven't found the actual quote from Robin, though...

Also in a movie of his, a toy used as a prop is a Production Model Evangelion toy from Robin Williams' personal collection. He's a geek.

Kris Kristofferson

[puto]

Although he doesn't have the best voice. He did write a slew of hits, Bobby Mcgee and Help me Make it through the night. Was one of the highway men.

1. Rhodes Scholar.
2. Military Helicopter Pilot.
3. Assigned as a professor at West Point but resigned his commission.
4. Golden Gloves boxer.

A true geek in the Heinlein sense. Smart and tough.

Re:Zappa on music

[fafne]

Yeah, Zappa was a true genious. Another thing he said back in the seventies IIRC, was something in the lines of "sometime in the future, the bulk of new music will consist of recycled ideas". And look, we got sampling a number of years later. Today, the number of true musical innovation creations topping the charts steadily dwindle.

Re:Obvious Missing Entries

[3waygeek]

More missing entries:

Gary Shandling -- was an EE before going into comedy
Cindy Crawford -- valedictorian of her high school class, received ChemE scholarship to Northwestern
Teri Hatcher -- math major

Re:blimey.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's probably because Mr Bean is one of Rowan Atkinson's worst characters ever and well below his normal level of quality with Edmund Blackadder.

The early episodes of Mr. Bean were *very* well crafted comedy- in fact, Atkinson had been doing them as part of his stage show for a long time (I had a copy of this on tape at one point, and he did one of the Bean sketches). So they'd obviously been polished and had the flaws knocked out of them.

Unfortunately, the quality seemed to go down quite fast as they started churning new episodes (and scripts) out and the character quickly became annoying.

Re:Portman

[utopianfiat]

I seem to remember something about Vin Diesel and D&D- and Asia Carrera playing Counterstrike.

Re:Psychology

[MicktheMech]

There is real science being practiced under the heading of Psychology. There is also pseudo-science people call psychology. What we really need is for a particular geeky slashdotter to track down her papers and have a look at the analysis.

Todd Rundgren is the biggest geek on the list

[K8Fan]

Todd Rundgren only gets a single line:

Our honor roll is in tune with three remarkable nerds. Todd Rundgren ("Hello It's Me") is legendary for developing the Utopia Graphics System, one of the very first paint programs, and has remained profoundly engaged with technology throughout his recording and producing career.

...but his involvement with technology has been greater than any other person in that list.

• He animated his own 3D music video "Change Myself" [youtube.com] in Lightwave on a big pile of Amiga 2000s.
• He wrote a massively popular screen saver, Flowfazer.
• He created the first completely interactive album "No World Order", allowing the listener to control the tempo, mood and vocal mix from a capella to instrumental for the Philips CDi platform.
• He may have been the first artist to sell music electronically, via downloads on Compu$erve.
• Wrote a very early OO operating system called HyperCode [google.com]

Pretty damn geeky.