CLIFFORD STOLL

Dr. Clifford Stoll is an astronomer, author, and self-described "computer contrarian" best known for uncovering one of the first publicly documented instances of state-sponsored cyber espionage. In 1986, while working as a systems administrator at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Stoll noticed a 75-cent accounting discrepancy in the lab's computer usage logs. Pulling on that thread, he spent months tracking down Markus Hess, a KGB-recruited hacker breaching US military and research networks, using little more than patience, curiosity, and a homemade honeypot. The investigation, and Stoll's meticulous documentation of it, is widely regarded as one of the earliest examples of digital forensics.

Stoll recounted the chase in "The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage" (1989), a New York Times bestseller that introduced a generation of readers to the idea of cyber espionage years before the term was common.

Stoll went on to become one of technology's most notable skeptics. In "Silicon Snake Oil" (1995), he questioned the sweeping promises being made about the internet, and in "High-Tech Heretic: Why Computers Don't Belong in the Classroom" (1999), he challenged the education industry's rush to put computers in every classroom, arguing that a good teacher needed no multimedia support and that most "computer literacy" initiatives were driven more by hype than by real learning outcomes.

Trained as an astronomer, Stoll has spent much of his career working in astrophysics and optics research, and is known for pairing rigorous scientific skepticism with a hands-on, curiosity-driven approach to teaching. Outside his writing and lecturing, he is also known for a more whimsical pursuit: handblowing and selling Klein bottles, a one-sided mathematical object, through his company, Acme Klein Bottle.