geekmadnessday3real

Editor’s Note: Geek Madness is our quest to find the greatest geek of all time

On Monday we kicked off the last four first-round matchups in the technology bracket, and today we’re doing the same on the math/science side.

Voting for the remaining eight games will wrap up Wednesday night, so make sure you head over to our Facebook page and help us pick the greatest geek.

Here are today’s games:

No. 2 Nikola Tesla vs. No. 15 Alexander Graham Bell

Tesla enters in as a championship contender and we’re expecting a blowout from the man who invented fluorescent lighting. While Bell is famous for creating the phone, Tesla should coast with an easy first-round win.

No. 3 Leonardo da Vinci vs. No. 14 Thomas Edison

Similar to the Tesla-Edison matchup, da Vinci should cruise through his first round meeting with Thomas Edison. The Italian legend was arguably one of the most-talented people to graze the earth. It’s worth noting that Edison does have 1,093 patents to his name.

No. 6 Marie Curie vs. No. 11 Gregor Mendel

This will be a tightly-contested match and we’re expecting it to go down to the wire. Curie, the first female Nobel Prize winner, is famous for her groundbreaking radioactivity research. Mendel, meanwhile, created the science of genetics. Both are kind of influential, I guess.

No. 7 Charles Darwin vs. No. 10 Johannes Gutenberg

Another showdown here. Through his theory of evolution, Darwin changed the way we thought about the world. Gutenberg made the first printing press and is the reason you’re able to read words on a page. No telling who has the edge here.

And here’s where the voting stands with the last-half of the technology bracket:

No. 2 Tim Berners-Lee 25, vs. No. 15 Admiral Grace Hopper, 28

Berners-Lee, the British computer scientist well-known for inventing the World Wide Web, came in as the clear favorite here. But Admiral Grace Hopper, a pioneer computer programmer, is putting up a fight. And for what it’s worth, she has a Cray supercomputer named after her.

No. 4 Vint Cerf/Bob Kahn 37, vs. No. 13 Jeff Bezos, 9

Cerf and Kahn invented the TCP/IP protocol, one of the most important components of the Internet. They’re having an easy time getting past Bezos, but perhaps the Amazon founder can ride his current wave of immense success and pull off the comeback.

No. 6 Elon Musk 26, vs. No. 11 Paul Allen, 29

As expected, this one is going down to the wire. The 41-year-old Musk comes in with quite the resume as the founder of PayPal, Tesla Motors and SpaceX. But Allen is certainly holding his own, as the Microsoft co-founder continues to pursue several scientific, entrepreneurial and philanthropic opportunities today.

No. 8 Marc Andreessen 10, vs. No. 9 Charles Babbage/Ada Lovelace 34

Sure, Andreessen co-authored Mosaic and then created Netscape, but Babbage and Lovelace were one of the first visionaries behind scientific computing and it’s showing in the votes.

So there’s that. Sweet 16 matchups will begin on Friday, but get your first-round votes in before Thursday night at our Facebook page.

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