Top 10 greatest geeks of all time

Honourable Mention: Curt Herzstark
Shaun Nichols: The first electronic miniature calculators emerged in 1970. What many people didn't realise, however, was that a calculator you could hold in your hand had been available for more than 20 years.

Curt Herzstark invented the Curta mechanical calculator prior to World War Two, then perfected the design while a prisoner in the Buchenwald concentration camp. To this day, the cylindrical crank-operated Curta is an engineering masterpiece.

Iain Thomson: Herzstark's invention literally saved his life, as it is unlikely that he would have survived the war without it and would have joined the six million Jews and five million others who fell victim to the Holocaust.

After the liberation he had to flee the Soviets before he could finally see his calculators made in Lichtenstein. For a phenomenally tenacious geek like Herzstark the invention of the electronic calculator must have been a hard blow indeed.

Honourable Mention: Randall Munroe
Iain Thomson: OK, mea culpa on this one, I fought long and hard to get Munroe into the top 10 but just couldn't justify it, so we settled on the Honourable Mention.

Randall Munroe was a NASA contractor who in 2006 came up with the idea of a web-based comic dealing with technology, philosophy, relationships and, occasionally, velociraptors.

In the past few years I have met very few people in the industry who do not have a favourite creation, even if some require knowledge of UNIX to get the joke.

Munroe has spawned entire internet subcultures, including Rule 34 (if you can imagine something then there's a web page of porn for it). He is a passionate supporter of women online and is one of the most popular public speakers in the technology field.

Munroe still codes, pursues geek activities such as kite photography and geohashing, and lives simply from the sale of merchandise. I feel he will become to the IT industry what Charles Schultz was to the world.

Shaun Nichols: I was a bit sceptical about this pick until I sat down and thought about just how well Munroe is able to skewer the industry. While what he makes doesn't change the face of computing, it really hits at the heart of everything in the tech world.

Every industry needs a satirist, a clown and a brilliant pundit. Munroe does all three amazingly well, while still keeping everything technically accurate.