Using a complex algorithm involving one’s IQ, the results from various logic tests and the weight of the sun divided by the total number of Canadians named Steve, we have calculated the definitive list of the 10 smartest people in the entire Bay Area. Do not bother refuting the almighty list. Your efforts will be in vain.

Brian Tucker
After witnessing first-hand the devastation caused by an earthquake in Tajikistan and realizing that the tragic loss of life could have been avoided with suitable earthquake prevention planning, seismologist Dr. Brian Tucker founded GeoHazards International in 1991, a one-of-a-kind, Palo Alto-based non-profit dedicated to helping impoverished parts of the globe prepare themselves for the inevitable challenges of natural disaster. Last year, Tucker launched two earthquake safety initiatives that will affect millions of people in 20 major cities in India and Central Asia. These three-year initiatives will assess risk, improve school and hospital safety standards and educate local governments on how to manage earthquake crises. For his tireless work in this financially-unrewarding field, Tucker was awarded the highly prestigious MacArthur Fellowship (dubbed the “Genius Grant”), which affords him $500,000 over the course of five years to pursue his altruistic ambitions without having to worry about where the cash is coming from.

Devorah Major
San Francisco’s current poet laureate has accomplished more in the literary arts field than we have the space to mention… But we’ll give it a shot anyway. The author of two novels and four volumes of poetry, devorah was recently inducted into the San Francisco State University Hall of Fame. When not teaching at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco as their poet-in-residence, devorah serves as an unpaid mediator with the California Lawyers for the Arts. As a volunteer with this group, she helps cash-strapped artists settle their conflicts with gallery owners, landlords, whomever, rather than have them waste their precious little money in the court system. Promoting poetry education is also an area dear to devorah’s heart. She’s evaluated countless art programs for the California Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. major has created more than 25 individual school poetry anthologies and trained hundreds of teachers throughout the state in poetry education.

Dana Bolles
Bolles works for NASA as an environmental compliance specialist at the Ames Research Center in Mountain View. She manages the program that ensures all of those nasty bio-hazardous chemicals NASA uses don’t end up in the air you breathe or the water you drink. Prior to Ames, Bolles worked at Goddard Space Flight Center as a fire protection safety engineer and at the Kennedy Space Station as a payload safety engineer, where she toiled on the Mars Orbiter project and one of the assembly flights for the International Space Station. “I like being in the environmental field. Everything we do affects the environment and if people had a better understanding of that, and if they knew the impact of their actions, I think a lot of bad stuff wouldn’t happen.” It’s also worth noting that the modest 34-year-old was born without arms or legs. She negotiates the demands of her 10-hour workdays with a wheelchair and prosthetic arms. “I don’t think my disability slows me down,” says the NASA engineer.

Sylvia Browne
Browne realized she had a psychic talent at the age of three. Mentored by her grandmother, who also shared the gift, Browne matured into a bona fide paranormal phenomenon. After completing her formal education in theology and comparative religion as well as earning a master’s degree in English literature, Browne opened the Nirvana Foundation for Psychic Research in 1974. Since then, the medium has written seven New York Times bestsellers about the paranormal experience and counseled thousands of people from all the major continents in an effort to help them gain a better understanding of their lives and potential through psychic channeling. The $1500/hour psychic (in-person sessions are booked more than two years in advance; if you absolutely need a reading within the next six months to a year, you can schedule a 30-minute phone session for $700) frequently holds séances where all proceeds benefit charitable organizations. Browne also donates many hours to counseling AIDS patients, abused children and the terminally ill, and she often helps local police departments find missing persons. For more information, visit www.sylvia.org.

Peter Hayes
Hayes spends most of his time managing the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainable Development, a non-governmental research and consulting group located in Berkeley. By combining research in the fields of science, politics, resource planning and socio-economics, Hayes and his team of geniuses are currently focusing their efforts on three major areas of global concern and designing proposals for overcoming the issues: 1) Combating radical climate change. 2) Halting nuclear proliferation and developing realistic, long-term plans for reducing atomic weaponry (with special emphasis on Northeast Asia). 3) Fostering ethical principles, including human rights and environmental standards, into the policies and management in the global economy. When he’s not leading his team of elite think-tank idealists, Hayes finds the time to oversee Nautilus’ Pegasus Program. The Pegasus initiative gives at-risk Bay Area youths the opportunity to learn about environmentally safe sailing, oceanography and teamwork aboard the 45-foot Pegasus research vessel. When he’s not traveling the world solving its myriad of problems, Hayes enjoys serving as the ship’s captain.

Jaron Lanier
Raised amidst squalid conditions in New Mexico and possessing no university degree (though he did briefly enroll in college at age 14), Lanier worked as a midwife, goat farmer and anti-nuclear activist before he moved to Palo Alto in the early ’80s, got a job programming for Atari and started tinkering around with electronics. It was during the off-hours work in his garage/studio that “virtual reality” was born. Lanier not only coined the term, he also co-invented the first glove-based device and headgear that allows humans to interact in virtual worlds. Currently, Lanier is the lead scientist of the National Tele-Immersion Initiative, which is basically developing Star Trek holodeck-style I’m-here-you’re-there-but-we’re-in-the-same-virtual-room technology and toying with VR’s potential applications in surgery. In his free time, Lanier collects exotic instruments from across the globe – all of which he knows how to play – and is an accomplished composer. Lanier has collaborated with Phillip Glass, George Clinton, Zap Mama and Ornette Coleman, and he’s written his own commissioned works for film and orchestra. He’s also a noted visual artist, writer, social theorist, consultant, speaker and philosopher for the computer age. The main character in Stephen King’s novel/movie Lawnmower Man is supposedly based on Lanier. The tiny nation of Palau issued a postage stamp in his honor and, on top of all that, he has big fat dreadlocks.

Greg Leyh
At the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) – one of the world’s only places where the mysterious field of quantum physics can be studied in-depth – trying to single out one physicist as the “smartest” is like arguing over which Godiva chocolate is the most delicious. Greg Leyh, a research engineer in SLAC’s power-conversions group, might feel on a daily basis that he’s the one who’s surrounded by geniuses (he recommended his homies Dr. Frisch and Kip Thorne for this article), but we picked him because he’s got the coolest extracurricular hobbies: crafting taser cannons, ion flux generators, Lorentz guns and the world’s largest Tesla coil. For his day job, Leyh and his teammates produce antimatter and analyze it. Right now, they’re studying a curious particle called the “B meson,” which holds clues as to why everything exists: In theory, during the Big Bang, there should have been equal amounts of both matter and antimatter and they should have annihilated each other, leaving a vacuum. Somehow, in one of the great mysteries of the universe, matter won out, and here we are. Greg Leyh and all the other genius physicists at SLAC are trying to figure out why.

Sabeer Bhatia
Born in Bangalore, India and now an SF resident, Sabeer Bhatia has come to represent the pinnacle of success to thousands of computer-industry workers both here and in his homeland. It’s not just the fact that he created Hotmail that’s made him a cultural icon and national (Indian) hero – it’s also the way he played hardball with the world’s richest man. After coming to America to get his master’s at Stanford, Bhatia sat in a cubicle at Apple for awhile. It was during this period that Bhatia and his buddy Jack Smith hit upon a then-revolutionary idea: to provide free email access to users from any internet-accessible computer on the planet. It was such a simple and universal concept that he couldn’t believe it hadn’t been conceived, so he and Smith got to work immediately. By the time Microsoft came sniffing around a year later, Hotmail already had 10 million users. Gates and company tried, quite literally, to bully Bhatia into selling Hotmail for $160 million. But, possessing an almost otherworldly calm, he held out, enduring the Microsoft investment team’s notorious temper tantrums. In 1998, on his 29th birthday, Bhatia finally sold for $400 million (today, Hotmail signs on 250,000 new users a day and is worth $6 billion). These days, Bhatia is awash with a new ambition: to wire India to the internet via a newfangled cable TV connection, creating the conditions for a socio-economic revolution and (he hopes) eventually bring his home country out of poverty and into the computer age. Indeed, Bhatia seems the most likely candidate for the job.

Hal Robins
Possessing an intense memory for detail and a vocabulary that could intimidate a dictionary, Hal Robins (a.k.a. Dr. Hal, a.k.a. Reverend Howland Owll) is the beloved “professor figure” of San Francisco’s performance-art underground. One of the founding members of the Church of SubGenius, Robins originally made a name for himself in the comic book world, collaborating with Last Gasp and Rip Off Press artists like R. Crumb. He’s also done voice-over work for television and award-winning video games like the Half-Life series. Robins has been writing, drawing, speaking and thinking in the Bay Area since disco was around. All his work is characterized by the faux-serious, overly-educated, sociologically-biting style that defines the SubGenius cult. These days, Robins is simultaneously starring in two theatrical productions: Dr. Strangelove and Rime of the Ancient Mariner, working on two books and just sort of walking around being smart. To hear this brainiac pontificate on all things about all things, listen to his radio show “Puzzling Evidence” every Friday morning from 3-5am on KPFA 94.1. But afterwards, you will feel dumb.

Joe Pedott
Inventor Joe Pedott, the man behind the Chia Pet empire, wasn’t satisfied to create just one pop consumer phenomenon. He’s also created The Clapper, the Oven Glove, the VCR Co-Pilot, the Chimney Sweeping Log, ThermaCELL Mosquito Repellent and other countless contraptions. Pedott and his San Francisco-based company, Joseph Enterprises, have made a killing off feeble old ladies and BBQ-happy husbands alike. All the while, he’s kept his products’ quality high and his prices cheap. He’s like the poor man’s Sharper Image. Unfortunately, this is all we know about Pedott, since he was out of his office as of press time – probably off inventing something else with a jingle we’ll all be singing shortly.