Following are some interesting accomplished folks I've discovered among us. Well, everyone is interesting, of course, but here are a few who’ve openly revealed fascinating (notable? expert? famous?) items about their occupations or preoccupations outside of Wikipedia:
- Adam Carr, a Melbourne gay rights activist and journalist, created and maintains Psephos, the largest, most comprehensive and up-to-date archive of electoral information in the world, with election statistics from 173 countries.
- Adrian Lamo, the "helpful hacker", is best known for his alleged unauthorized explorations of corporate networks at companies such as Yahoo!, AOL Time Warner, MCI WorldCom, Microsoft, NSA contractor CSC, and lastly The New York Times. See Wikipedia page Adrian Lamo.
- Azraphale, aka Adam Wade, is author of Motorcycle Fuel Injection Handbook and writes and photographs for a number of motorcycle magazines.
- Betsythedevine, aka Betsy Devine, is a journalist, author and blogger. She is co-author of Longing for the Harmonies, an appreciation of modern physics, and Absolute Zero Gravity, a collection of science jokes.
- Bradfitz, aka Brad Fitzpatrick, is an American programmer best known as the creator of LiveJournal, as well as for being the former owner of Danga Interactive, which is now owned by Six Apart.
- BrandonYusufToropov has authored dozens of books, including The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Koran and The Complete Idiot's Guide to World Religions.
- Cberlet, aka Chip Berlet, is an American investigative journalist and researcher, who among other things has written for The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Mother Jones and Columbia Journalism Review. He has appeared on ABC Nightline, NBC Today Show, CBS This Morning, CNN, and The Oprah Winfrey Show.
- Christiaan Briggs is a political activist who helped organize the Human shield action to Iraq in 2003 with Ken O'Keefe.
- Christian Plattner is an internationally renowned jazz artist living near Vienna, Austria.
- Cumbey, aka Constance Cumbey, has authored a couple of books on "the dangers of the New Age movement."
- Daniel C. Boyer is a surrealist painter, photographer, cartoonist, and author with many published works. He is grandson of mathematical historian Carl Benjamin Boyer.
- Doctorow, aka Cory Doctorow, is a blogger, journalist and science fiction author of several award-winning books including Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and A Place So Foreign and Eight More. He is co-editor of the weblog, Boing Boing, and has regular columns in Popular Science and Make magazines. He is a contributing writer to Wired, The New York Times Magazine, The Globe and Mail, Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, and The Boston Globe. In 2004, he wrote an essay on Wikipedia included in The Anthology at the End of the Universe and delivered a powerful talk to Microsoft on copyright, technology, and DRM.
- Eddiedonovan, aka Edgardo Donovan, is a hyperpolyglot and can speak, read and understand 30 languages.
- Edip Yuksel, a former sunni scholar who spent years as a political prisoner in Turkey, has authored more than a dozen books- and numerous articles on religion, politics, philosophy, law, humor and poetry in English and Turkish. See Wikipedia article Edip Yuksel.
- EricGiguere is a software developer who has written several technical books.
- Gary D Robson is author of the Who Pooped in the Park? series, children's guides to scats and tracks, each set in a different national park.
- Hayford Peirce is a writer of science fiction, mysteries and spy thrillers. He has written numerous short stories for Analog, Galaxy and Omni, as well as mystery shorts for Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Some of his science fiction and mystery novels have been translated into several languages, for example, Napoleon Disentimed. See Wikipedia article, Hayford Peirce, as well as his books at Amazon. He is nephew of American painter Waldo Peirce.
- Isabel Santiago appeared in a music video with rapper Lil' Mike in April 2005.
- Jliberty, aka Jesse Liberty, has authored dozens of best-selling books on .NET, web development and object oriented programming.
- Jpgordon, aka Josh Gordon, was once lead trumpet for the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo.
- Kils, aka Uwe Kils, a German oceanographer, initiated and directed the floating laboratory ATOLL. He worked in Antarctica on metabolism and behavior of krill, and in the Baltic on predator-prey interactions of juvenile herring and plankton. He has developed many new oceanographic instruments and is widely published in scientific journals.
- Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters, aka David Mertz, is author of Text Processing in Python and is a columnist for IBM's developerWorks, Intel Developer Services, O'Reilly's ONLamp, and other online publications such as Charming Python and XML Matters. He is vice-president and chief technology officer of the Open Voting Consortium and maintains Gnosis Utilities, a public domain Python package.
- Lumidek, aka Luboš Motl, is a Czech theoretical physicist who works on string theory and conceptual problems of quantum gravity. An assistant professor at Harvard University, he is a co-founder of Matrix string theory. He translated The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene to Czech, and co-authored a Czech textbook on linear algebra, We Grow Linear Algebra.
- Mark K. Jensen translated The Consecration of the Writer, 1750-1830, the work of French literary historian and critic Paul Bénichou, into English.
- Mel Etitis, (known only under a pseudonym), is a professor of philosophy and English in the University of Oxford.
- Mowens35, aka Mitchell Owens, is an American writer living in Morocco who has edited, written and reported for The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, Architectural Digest, as well as other newspapers and magazines.
- PaulinSaudi, aka Paul Adkins, is author of Codeword Dictionary. A retired U.S. Army infantry officer, he teaches English in Saudi Arabia.
- Ramallite is a molecular biologist working on cancer, hailing from the city of Ramallah in occupied Palestine.
- Sci guy is a research scientist whose publications include development of antibody tests and the human genome, particularly relating to identifying biological markers of human disease and development of tests to improve the diagnosis of human disease. Doctors have referred patients to him who fail to respond to treatment and the usual conclusion is that the diagnosis was incorrect.
- Slehar, aka Steven Lehar, psychology professor at Salem State College, has authored many books and papers on psychology, philosophy, biological vision and Gestalt theory.
- TonyMPNS, aka Tony Page, is author of Vivisection Unveiled as well as other books on Mahayana Buddhism.
- Wcalvin, aka William H. Calvin, a well-known popularizer of neuroscience and evolutionary biology, has written dozens of books on brains, evolution and climate.
- Wilke, aka Claus Wilke, a theoretical physicist working in population genetics, particularly virus evolution, has authored over 30 publications in scientific journals, among them Nature, Genetics, Evolution, and Physical Review Letters. He also regularly reviews for Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, PLoS Biology, Journal of Theoretical Biology, and Physical Review Letters, among others.
- William M. Connolley has published many articles in the field of Climatology; see Wikipedia article William Connolley.