People whose work I find interesting

Douglas Hofstadter , for his masterpiece of mathematics, music, computing, and the mind entitled Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (New York: Basic Books. 1979). I had been (slowly) reading his Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought (New York: Basic Books, 1995). but got bogged down; Also of interest: DRH Wikipedia entry Le Ton Beau De Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language (New York, Basic Books May 1997)

“No one knows where the borderline between intelligent and non-intelligent behavior lies; in fact, to suggest that a sharp borderline exists is silly. But essential abilities for intelligence are certainly:

to respond to situations flexibly

to take advantage of fortuitous circumstances

to make sense out of ambiguous or contradictory messages

to recognize the relative importance of the different elements of a situation

to find similarities between situations despite the differences which separate them

to draw distinctions between situations despite the similarities which may link them

to synthesize new concepts by taking old concepts and putting them together in new ways

to come up with ideas that are novel.”

Edward Tufte is Professor of Political Science, Statistics, and Computer Science at Yale, and author and publisher of The Visual Display of Quantitative Information , Envisioning Information and Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative . Salon magazine interviewed him in an article "The Data Artist" in 1997. Another good article is here.

Edward Tufte

“The most common mistake is thin content. People don't have anything to say, or they don't have very much to say. In order to cover that up, the design becomes thick and decorative. They start fooling around. They show three phony dimensions to show one real dimension of information, and it gets "chartjunky". Most of what happens in an information presentation depends on the quality and the relevance and the integrity of the content. If the numbers are lying, it's too late. Information design can't help you...”

RADM Grace Murray Hopper PhD was a woman of incredible intellect and personal energy who I admire greatly. Chief among her early accomplishments was the invention of the FLOW-MATIC compiler and language, which eventually became the COBOL programming language.
Her life demonstrated to me that it is possible for a woman to overcome prejudice and speak with authority and wisdom in computing and other engineering endeavors.
“To me programming is more than an important practical art. It is also a gigantic undertaking in the foundations of knowledge ”

Marvin Minsky , for his book Society of Mind . I've been picking away at this puppy for a couple of years now, on and off; It's conceptually dense, but rewarding.
“Paradoxically, it is smart to realize one is confused, as opposed to being confused without knowing it. For that stimulates us to apply our intellect to altering or repairing the defective process. Yet we dislike and disparage the sense of confusion, not appreciating the quality of this recognition.”

I'm not really sure what to say about Richard Feynman ...but he was a great physicist and a facinating person.

I've found Gerald Weinberg 's books to be worthwhile, especially The Psychology of Computer Programming and An Introduction to General Systems Theory .

Robert Heinlien 's science fiction writing has been an entirely too strong influence on me during my childhood.