Aid to Evaluating Your Accomplishments

part of Career Guide for Engineers and Scientists
Compare yourself to these four ordinary people who were selected at random:

Tuberculosis Sufferer Niels Henrik Abel

Developed group theory, proved the binomial theorem, and did important work in quintic equations and elliptic functions prior to his death at age 26.

(more)

Hartford Connecticut Insurance Executive Wallace Stevens

Won Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1954; best known for "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird".

(more)

Frail Lincolnshire Lad I. Newton

During an 18-month school vacation, developed calculus, inverse square law of gravitation, and laws of motion.

(more)

Encyclopedia Americana staff writer Norbert Wiener

Received Ph.D. from Harvard at age 18, subsequently founded field of communication science/cybernetics.

(more)

Programmed by Eve Astrid Andersson and Philip Greenspun back in the mid-1990s. If you're a nerd, you might find the source code useful.

Original Inspiration: How to Make Yourself Miserable, by Dan Greenburg


philg@mit.edu