skygiants

Richard Feynman! I read his book when I was fairly young, and before we went to visit Los Alamos, so it was really fun to see all the buildings and whatnot. Also, my family is made of engineers, chemists, biologists, et al., and I was clearly edging towards English even then, so I think it was a desperate attempt to keep me with the herd.

You've got a point about the pettiness of his approach, too. I didn't notice it as a kid, and my cousins were practical jokers too--minus the "I am doing this to prove how smart I am!" element--who thought that learning new skills to pull a prank was the height of genius; they were older, though, and never got mean or skeezy like Feynman does.