Badass Bookworm/Real Life

Examples of Badass Bookworms in Real Life include:

Due to the combination of mandatory military conscription by the state and the cultural emphasis on education in Judaism, Israel produces a number of these.
- In the pioneering days when there wasn't a wave of persecution somewhere to supply refugees, there had to be some way to get recruits to die like flies from malaria and bandits. Enthusiasts were more likely to come from colleges than anywhere else as that is where you find ideologically interested people then as now.
T.E. Lawrence. Yes, that Lawrence. Who by chance is also an example in film. There was also a badass Czech/Austrian theologist working against him.
Ludwig Wittgenstein. He's commonly known as an outstandingly influential philosopher. What's less known is that he was also an exceptionally brave soldier in WWI (albeit one fighting for The Empire).
Neil De Grasse Tyson. Astronomer, Director of the Hayden Planetarium, wrestler and boxer in school and still, as he told an interviewer "a nerd who could kick your butt."
Jamie Hyneman of MythBusters is also a brainy geek who's repeatedly demonstrated his excellent badassery with firearms (for example, he did the Scope Snipe test, firing freehand without a scope on his rifle). In another episode, he smashed the locks off a door, barehanded. Not to mention calmly reporting the situation with a steady voice while being buried alive. Also worth noting that before he was in Mythbusters, he was an owner of a Caribbean salvage diving company, animal wrangler and a wilderness survival expert.
Daniel P. Bolger, writer and soldier.
Dr. Liviu Librescu, Romanian-born Holocaust survivor, scientist and academic professor. During the Virginia Tech massacre, Librescu personally kept the door shut to prevent gunman Seung-hui Cho from entering the classroom while his students escaped out the windows. He was shot through the door five times before finally succumbing to a shot to the head. Of course, he had a history, since surviving the Holocaust takes a Determinator in itself...
Perhaps the best example though was Alfred the Great, King of Wessex and arguably the founder of England. He was bookworm to the Nth degree and he was badass to the Nth degree. He was a great scholar, fond of theology, philosophy, and the classical lore from the Romans and before. He was also a great warrior and could earn the devotion of his followers at a time when kings were expected to fight beside their men. He codified laws, encouraged learning, and organized a military system that could protect against the Danes.
Henry Knox. He started out as a bookseller in Boston, who read all the books on military science as they came in. When the Revolutionary War broke out, Washington put him in charge of the artillery corps. He moved sixty tons of cannon overland, through mountains, from Ft. Ticonderoga to Boston and drove the British fleet from the harbor. Knox shared Washington's boat during the crossing of the Delaware and wound up as the nation's first Secretary of War.
Roald Dahl was an Ace Pilot in the Second World War. Yes, THAT Roald Dahl. What is arguably more badass is when the war broke out he had to round up all the German people in the town in Africa where he lived. He managed to stop them from escaping with only one death on his hands. Oh, and he did this without any training, being told it was his responsibility only the day before.
Most African-American civil rights leaders fit this trope.
- Frederick Douglass taught himself to read and was an excellent orator. He also beat his slavemaster's ass. No, seriously.
- Malcolm X.
While he never really went out ass-kicking, the fact remains that Niels Bohr, second most important theoretical physicist of the 20th century, aka "The Great Dane", was a huge, two metres tall athlete known for always taking two stairs at once even in old age. Ernest Rutherford, an experimental physicist with a pronounced dislike for theoreticals once remarked, "Bohr is different. He plays football."
Leonardo da Vinci was allegedly able to bend iron horseshoes straight. He also used a gun of his own design to kill soldiers attacking the city of Florence from 300 yards away. Good shooting even compared to modern day soldiers. Leonardo da Vinci was an artist first and foremost and lived on the art commissions of wealthy patrons. However, in his resume to Cesare Borgia he did rather focus on his engineering skills, throwing in painting as an afterthought.
Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain is a particularly striking example of this trope. Before he joined the Union Army in the civil war, he was a professor at Bowdoin University. At the Battle of Gettysberg he commanded the 20th Maine. Not only was he awarded multiple honors for bravery in combat, including the Medal of Honor, but he also received wounds that should have been fatal, not once but twice. He survived the war and went back to teaching. By the end, he had taught every subject except mathematics.
Francis Lovell, later Viscount Lovell. Boyhood best friend of Richard III, he was as much a bookish scholar as Richard was an accomplished warrior. However, upon hearing that Richard had been killed in Battle against Henry Tudor, he proceeded to lead a revolution against Tudor in order to put Richard's heir on the throne, including literally leading the army into battle. The fact that the revolt ultimately failed does not in any way decrease the utter awesome badassedry of that.
General Vo Nguyen Giap was an economist, schoolteacher and journalist before he joined up with Ho Chi Minh and became one of the Vietnam People's Army's most badass military leaders.
Socrates served as a foot soldier in three major Athenian campaigns. He once escorted Alcibiades, one of his superiors, through a chaotic battle back to safety by himself. He gathered a number of hoplites around him, made faces at the Theban cavalry until they decided to seek easier prey. Then he walked away. The other Athenians either ran or died.
His student Plato was a champion wrestler. He might count instead as a Genius Bruiser, however: "plato" means "broad," and he was named such for his broad shoulders.
Annmaria Rousey Demars. Ph.D.'s in both engineering and statistics. Barely over five feet tall. Judo gold medals. And she's obviously a great teacher too: her daughter Rhonda Rousey won a gold in judo at the Beijing Olympics. Do NOT mess with this family!
Sir Richard Francis Burton. In this case, truth is far more awesome than fiction.
Insofar as his appearance on film is concerned, Lieutenant John Chard, (British) Royal Army Engineers probably qualifies. Oh, you don't know who he is? Well, there's this little confrontation called the Battle of Rorke's Drift where about 100 English soldiers held off four thousand Zulus. John Chard was the commanding officer during the battle.
Saxton Pope was a doctor and surgical instructor at the University of California who became close friends with Ishi, the last member of almost certainly the last 'uncontacted' First Nation tribe. He picked up a plethora of ancient skills from him, literally wrote the book on modern fieldcraft and bowhunting, and killed grizzly bears using home-made bows and arrows.
Siegfried Sassoon: These days, his reputation is as an anti-war war poet. What's often forgotten is that he was just as good at waging war as writing about it, including a single-handed attack on a German trench (which got him a medal) and numerous other near-suicidal exploits. Unlike fellow warrior-poet Wilfred Owen (equally brave and equally decorated), he managed to die of old age.
Abraham Lincoln, well-known as a bookworm, is often cited as performing ridiculous feats of physical strength with little to no effort. And then there was the time he was challenged to a duel of his choice, and he chose broadswords in a pit. He also fought pirates and worked for a time as an amateur wrestler, during which time he reportedly invented the choke-slam when an opponent stomped on his feet.
- He also hunted vampires.
Dr. Ruth Westheimer—yes, THAT Dr. Ruth—was a sniper. At 16. She had joined Haganah, an underground Jewish military, where they discovered she was deadly accurate with a sniper rifle and with tossed hand grenades.
Isaac Barrow, Newton's old teacher and predecessor as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, was a noted brawler who, while traveling in the Middle East, was credited with driving off pirates who attacked the ship on which he was a passenger with his ferocious swordsmanship.
Mosh?eldenkrais. Physicist, WWII Naval Science officer, Judo expert.
Brigadier General Nathanael Greene, the youngest general in the US Continental Army at 33, learned everything he knew about warfare from books. That he taught himself to read. He went on to join the revolutionary effort despite a strong limp and a nonviolent religious background-people called him "The Fighting Quaker"
Kim Komenich, professor and photo journalist. Also the bane of stupid bank robbers.
Pioneers of aeronautics mostly were their own test pilots, with everything this implies: wings of wood and tarp, balls of tool steel. One of last cases was R.E. Alexeev, constructor of Soviet WIGs. Once an Eaglet landed on the rocks. In a later practice flight the pilot slams this machine in a wave when landing. Some instruments in the cockpit shut down, but takeoff engines on the nose are still heard. Alexeev jumps the controls and sets the remaining engines to full throttle, then takes one look from a top hatch, says "To the base." and takes the place of the pilot. They run about 40 km like this, land, then commission members disembark and discover what this was about -- the tail is broken off.
- There is also Howard Hughes. Many of the airplanes he designed were built from his experience as an airplane racer, and he had little former education in how to build or design aircraft, but went on to make some of the most influential designs in post WW 1 aviation. When he crashed the XF-11 in 1946, he ended up grievously injured and confined to a bed. Deciding he did not like the bed, he ended up dictating a design that had hot and cold running water and push-button adjustments. He was also the archetypal millionaire playboy. Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark were both heavily inspired by Hughes.
Space collects this sort of people almost by definition. It's full of even greater dangers on the way of development than air, in that past successes don't ensure at all that the next small step will not be catastrophic. Even after the first manned space flight, a whole generation of Soviet rockets were more likely to vaporize everyone around than to pull their load into orbit, and even later American shuttles were at least half as nasty. The people who get to see the Earth from above for real usually has a lot of training not only to stay alive and well after nearly squashing acceleration, but also to deal with any expected and unexpected technical problems on board.
- An example: F. Story Musgrave: computer scientist, chemist, mathematician, medical doctor and biophysicist. Went into space six times. On his last mission, he stood up during re-entry to film, taking 1.7 Gs. He was SIXTY-ONE at the time. Also went back to school to get a master's degree in Literature so he could properly express what he'd seen and done.
Robbing a bunch of gamers? How hard could it be to take on a bunch of nerds. Just watch out for the guy with a DS.
Alexander Hamilton and Nathan Hale.
Former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson comes across as a quiet smart guy in interviews. He climbed Mt. Everest with a broken leg.
Wong Fei Hung. Not only was he a doctor, but he ran a militia too.
A.J. Ayer. To quote from his biography: "Ayer was . . . chatting to a group of young models and designers, when a woman rushed in saying that a friend was being assaulted in a bedroom. Ayer went to investigate and found Mike Tyson forcing himself on a young south London model called Naomi Campbell . . . Ayer warned Tyson to desist. Tyson: 'Do you know who the f$*k I am? I'm the heavyweight champion of the world.' Ayer stood his ground: 'And I am the former Wykeham Professor of Logic. We are both preeminent in our field; I suggest that we talk about this like rational men.' Ayer and Tyson began to talk. Naomi Campbell slipped out." He was 77 at the time.
There was a US Navy exercise which involved having a team Navy SEALs attempt to take over an amphibious assault ship on their own. They had succeeded in taking over most of the ship and had neutralized most of the security, but were held off by the ship's engineers who armed themselves with tools and pieces of pipe and used safety netting to restrict the areas of approach.
Confucius. Despite being the founder of a notoriously dorky, scholarly philosophy, he was said to be tall and strong. The arts he taught included rites, music, arithmetic, literature, archery and charioting, the last two being martial in nature. Eastern ideals of “warrior-gentleman” such as Japan’s “bunbu ryōdō” were influenced by this.
Uwe Boll is known for challenging critics who pan his films to boxing matches because he apparently has some boxing experience. He tried to challenge gaming critic Seanbaby to a match, so Seanbaby sent him with his height, weight, and fighting experience. Boll reportedly backed off after discovering that he's a little more "fit" than your typical gaming nerd.
Almost ALL Finnish politicians, industrialists, managers, businessmen, lawyers and anyone holding any significant position have been in the Army Reserve Officers Academy in Hamina, Academy of Maritime Warfare in Helsinki or Academy of Aerial Warfare in Kauhava in their twenties.
- Finnish president Mauno Koivisto. He served as a ranger squad leader in the long range troops of Lauri Törni - later known as Larry Thorne. Koivisto holds the degree of Doctor in Sociology.
Leon Trotsky was an intellectual with no military experience, buy still managed to found the red army and lead it to victory against its many enemies. A few times he even got personally involved, mainly by rallying fleeing red army soldiers. According to the historian Paul Johnson, Trotsky seriously pissed off the rest of the Politburo by reading novels during the meetings instead of discussing business. Now that's a real bookworm.
- Not to mention, of course, the fact that Trotsky's death epitomises this trope in a nutshell. He was approached from behind and cloven in the head with an ice pick whilst reading, and yet still managed to turn on, grapple with, knock down and pin his assailant to the floor long enough for his bodyguards to come to his assistance. Only then did he collapse, later to die of his injuries
Eric Greitens is a Rhodes scholar with a doctorate in politics from Oxford University who wrote his dissertation on how humanitarian organizations can best help children affected by war. After he got his Ph.D., he decided he was up for another challenge, so he became a Navy SEAL.
Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is a wonkish bookworm Fulbright scholar with a master's degree from Cornell University. She's also married to an equally Badass Bookworm astronaut and combat veteran, and she enjoys fixing her own cars, riding and racing motorcycles, and taking part in a little roller derby now and then. Oh, yeah, she also survived a bullet to the brain in an assassination attempt and is making what doctors have called a remarkable and miraculous recovery. Though many patients describe rehab as the hardest thing they've ever done, Giffords decided her rehab regimen was "too wimpy" and designed a more rigorous plan. Unfortunately, Congresswoman Giffords has been unable to return to work and has had to resign her seat in Congress, but that doesn't make her and her amazing feat of recovery any less badass. It just makes her human.
Marxist revolutionary Ernesto 'Che' Guevara, MD; also a literary and philosophical commentator.
George Scovell, cavalryman and intelligence officer.
Frederick the Great of Prussia wrote music, poetry, history, political propaganda, satires etc. as well as textbooks on warfare (including an art of war written entirely in verse). And he personally commanded the Prussian army through some of the bloodiest and most hard-fought campaigns of the 18th century.
- His brother, the well-read and somewhat short prince Heinrich (Henry) was another such example. His brother Frederick called him the only commander of the Seven Years' War who did not make a single mistake.
Gerhard von Scharnhorst reorganized the Prussian army for the Wars of Liberation. Many other officers looked down on him because of his lowly peasant origins, his unassuming appearance (in particular his skinny legs) and because he was best known for writing several textbooks and his teaching at Hanoverian and Prussian military schools. However, he relished getting into combat, was wounded several times, picked up a musket so he could be the last officer to leave the battlefield after the defeat of Auerstedt (1806) and died because he started making long journeys after being wounded at Großgörschen (1813). His top student Carl von Clausewitz was another example.
Archibald Wavall was a reclusive and eccentric British General who was fond of poetry and practically destroyed the Italian empire by himself in World War II.
Louis Nicolas Davout certainly looked the part, being bald and having to wear glasses because of his myopia. Still he was one of Napoleon's toughest lieutenants, earning the sobriquet "the Iron Marshal".
Advanced practitioners of Historical European Martial Arts may become this; since the martial arts in question are revivals of lost styles via study of the period fighting manuals, any practitioner who seeks proper understanding must read at least a few different manuals of one style for the sake of context and technique verification.
Jacques Cousteau developed his passion for undersea exploration and perfected modern scuba-diving apparatus as an officer in the French Navy during World War II...while also leading commando operations against Axis intelligence operatives and helping to bring the French fleet onto the Allied side. Also notable in that his home was directly opposite that of Admiral Darlan, Prime Minister of the Vichy government.
Another entry from France: Marcel Marceau was a member of the French Resistance who practiced mime as a means of keeping Jewish children quiet as he and his brother smuggled them into Switzerland. It's fair to say that there are a few people out there today who don't hate mimes as a result.
Cao Cao. Yes, THAT Cao Cao. He was, in reality, not just a warrior and a ruler, but also an accomplished poet. He also wrote some commentary on Sun Tzu's The Art of War. Some records depict him as taking time to read every day, even when on military campaign.
Cory Booker. Stanford graduate, Rhodes Scholar who attended Oxford, owner of a Doctorate from Yale Law School, mayor of Newark, NJ... and guy who ran into a burning building to save people trapped inside.
Varian Fry. Scholar, Journalist, Spy, Refugee Smuggler and Righteous Among the Nations.
This is par for the course for Intelligence Officers. While James Bond pictures spies as spending their time seducing women and smashing cars a fairly large number of historical spies, including field agents as well as analysts were best described as nerds. And all of them even if they look like James Bond or Annie Walker have to at least be smart enough to be nerds if they are to have a role beyond that of an expendable street informant or message carrier.
Admiral Raymond A. Spruance. He was a cold blooded Vulcan like admiral who personally led fleets under fire but his fondest ambition was to chair the Naval War College, one of the most nerdy of nerdistic ambitions.

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