Intellectual Ninja Index

Intellectual Ninja is a series of posts about people who are not only brilliant, but also brilliant in previously unheard of ways. These are people that have influenced and shaped our civilization. They are also amazingly cool. Below you will find a gallery of the Intellectual Ninja posts with brief descriptions and links to the full posts. Please feel free to nominate candidates for future posts. 

Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau
Poet, Writer, Naturalist,
Botanist, War Protester, and
Intellectual Ninja

Thoreau was a genius. He was Harvard educated and could have been anything he wanted to be. The most likely occupations for him seemed to be that of lawyer or clergyman. He rejected both of these and instead became an Intellectual Ninja.

Thoreau wrote amazing and stunning poetry. Most of his subjects were related to nature. He was one of the foremost experts on New England ecology and botany in his day. Incidentally, ecology didn’t even really exist as a discipline in the early to mid 1800’s. Thoreau helped invent it.

He is one of the most influential thinkers ever. He has been a source of inspiration for several Nobel Peace Prize winners. Click here to read more about how one-of-a-kind awesome Henry David Thoreau was.

Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson
Poet, Master of Stealth, and
Intellectual Ninja

Emily Dickinson was so ninja, almost nobody knew she was one of the world’s most amazing poets until after her death. During her lifetime only ten or eleven of her poems were published. After her death it was discovered that she had written over 1800 different poems.

She wrote in a style much different from what was common in poetry during her lifetime. She used a different rhyme scheme. She also rarely used titles and experimented with punctuation and capitalization. She was probably one of the first modern poets, even though that movement wouldn’t officially begin until well after her death. Click here to find out how Dickinson turned poetry on its head.

Philo T. Farnsworth

Philo T. Farnsworth
Inventor, Father of
Television, and
Intellectual Ninja

What were you doing when you were thirteen years old? Farnsworth was plowing his family’s farm near Rigby, Idaho inventing the framework for the television. His ideas would remain a part of every television manufactured through almost the entire 20^th century. He also, on his own, found an old burnt out motor at their new farm, took it apart, and used the pieces to convert his mother’s handmade washing machine into an electric one. He also won $25 for inventing a magnetized car lock.

Farnsworth later sketched out his ideas for a completely electronic television on the blackboard for his high school chemistry teacher. Philo T. Farnsworth wasn't afraid of anybody and went toe-to-toe with one of the most powerful media companies of his time. Click here to find out how Farnsworth defeated this giant.

Ada Lovelace

Ada Lovelace
Mathematician, Coder,
Computer Visionary, and
Intellectual Ninja

Coders are all the rage these days, but Ada Lovelace would probably find them so 19th century. She was ninja enough to write an algorithm to compute a sequence of Bernoulli numbers in 1842 and 1843. That’s a solid 100 plus years before ENIAC, the world’s first electronic general purpose computer. By the way, Bernoulli numbers are a too complex to explain here so you can read about them here.

Lovelace wasn’t just some Victorian era mathematician and coder; she also completely understood the power of computers long before the rest of the world did. Follow this link to learn more about this genius and her prophetic vision for what computers would become.

Gandhi

Gandhi
Peace Activist,
Lawyer, Civil Rights Leader, and
Intellectual Ninja

Born Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, but known to the world as Gandhi, this Intellectual Ninja maybe the most amazing of them all. Gandhi defeated the British Empire with the power of his mind. He liberated approximately 12% of the entire world’s population, without firing a shot. He won a British War Medal without being a soldier.

Gandhi was from the Merchant caste in India and was educated as a lawyer. Early in his life he work in South Africa where he fought for the civil rights of Indians living there. He formed his dedication to the cause of non-violent civil disobedience there, even though he has attacked by mobs, jailed, and beaten repeatedly. To read how Gandhi won his war medal click here.

Marie Curie

Marie Curie
Scientist, Double Nobel Prize Winner,
Author, Medical-
Pioneer and
Intellectual Ninja

Winning a Nobel Prize is pretty ninja. Wining two Nobel Prizes makes you an elite Intellectual Ninja. Winning two Nobel Prizes in two different sciences makes you Marie Curie. Curie performed her work at a time where women were discouraged from even getting educated in most of the world, did not have to right to vote in most western democracies, and were often seen as simply an extension of the men in their lives. Curie wasn’t having any of that.

Curie’s scientific discoveries changed the course of history by opening the way for advanced medical treatments. She served as a radiologist in a war zone. Her philanthropy continues to save lives today through the two advanced medical research institutes she founded. Oh yeah, she also wrote an amazing cookbook. However her cookbook and many of her scientific papers are too radioactive to touch. Click here to learn more about Marie Curie.

Roger Tomlinson

Roger Tomlinson
Geographer, Geoligist,
Innovator and
Intellectual Ninja

Have you ever used Google Maps, your cell phone, or a hand held GPS unit to find anything? If so you can thank Roger Tomlinson. He was ninja enough to invent a new field of study and discipline, Geographic Information Systems (GIS). This British genius led Canada to create the first computerized GIS system in the world.

Tomlinson got his start on changing the way the world thinks about maps when he was working for a private company in Canada with a government contract. He hit a seemingly impassable obstacle working on an aid project when he changed the world. Follow this link to find out how Tomlinson solved his problem and paved the way for GPS.





All images in public domain or created by me, all rights reserved
Some content previously appeared on Bubblews, appears here with permission

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Jason McBride is the creator of the Intellectual Ninja and the Scourge of Scoundrels series. He is also the author of Watch Out For Sneaker Waves. He is currently hard at work on his first book of fiction, available Spring 2014.

He is the proud father of four amazing children and the happy husband of one wife. He aspires to be an extreme sleeper.