Dr GEB Kivistik
From the Quicksilver Metaweb.
Dr. G.E.B. Kivistik seems to be the son of Julieta Kivistik, born after she is married to Enoch Root on his "deathbed." Which G.E.B. is he, i.e. whether Günter, Enoch, or Bobby is the father is never established, but G.E.B. is Finnish by way of England as a result of the conspiracy's effort to get Julieta a non-German passport for her and her child.
Is Herr Doktor Günter Enoch Bobby Kivistik a nod to Gödel Escher Bach?
!BELOW ARE SPOILERS!
Stephensonia
If Randy is a dwarf as he thinks in the Tolkien sense of it, what is GEB?
Authored entries
TBA
Linguistic note
The abbreviation "geb." in German means "born", a wink to the period in which the honorable doctor came to the world.
GEB
From Cryptonomicon: Dr. G. E. B. Kivistik had a few things to say about the Information Superhighway. He was a fiftyish Yale professor who had just flown in from someplace that had sounded really cool and impressive when he had gone out of his way to mention it several times. His name was Finnish, but he was British as only a non-British Anglophile could be. Ostensibly he was here to attend War as Text. Really he was there to recruit Charlene, and really really (Randy suspected) to fuck her. This was probably not true at all, but just a symptom of how wacked out Randy was getting by this point. Dr. G. E. B. Kivistik had been showing up on television pretty frequently. Dr. G. E. B. Kivistik had a couple of books out. Dr. G. E. B. Kivistik was, in short, parlaying his strongly contrarian view of the Information Superhighway into more air time than anyone who hadn't been accused of blowing up a day care center should get.
Neither the mutinous Kapitänleutnant Günter Bischoff, gloriously defrocked Father Enoch Root or the magnificently A.W.O.L. Corporal Bobby Shaftoe seem worthy of the golden braid of Gödel Escher Bach.
... Günter Enoch Bobby Kivistik. Eight pounds, three ounces — superb for a wartime baby. ... leads us to the three:
Kurt Gödel
Kurt Gödel, pronounced somewhat like "Girdle", ( April 28, 1906 -January 14, 1978) was a mathematician born in Austria-Hungary. When Austria-Hungary broke up he became Austrian citizen at age 23 and later also US citizen at age 42. He was a deep logician whose most famous work was the Incompleteness Theorem stating that any self-consistent axiomatic system powerful enough to describe integer arithmetic will allow for propositions about integers that can neither be proven nor disproven from the axioms. He also produced celebrated work on the Continuum hypothesis, showing that it cannot be disproven from the accepted set theory axioms, assuming that those axioms are consistent. It is claimed Kurt Gödel is the greatest logician of the 20th century and one of the three greatest logicians of all time, with the other two of this historical triumvirate being Aristotle and Frege. He published his most important result in 1931 at age 25 when he worked at Vienna University, Austria.
M. C. Escher
Maurits Cornelis Escher (June 17, 1898 - March 27, 1972) was a Dutch artist most known for his woodcuts, lithographs and mezzotints, which tend to feature impossible constructions, explorations of infinity, and interlocking geometric patterns which change gradually into completely different forms. Well known examples of his work include Drawing Hands, a work in which two hands are shown drawing each other, Sky and Water, in which plays on light and shadow convert fish in water into birds in the sky, and Ascending and Descending, in which lines of people ascend and descend stairs infinitely in a loop, on a construction which is impossible to build and possible to draw only by taking advantage of quirks of perception and perspective. Escher's work has a strong mathematical component, and many of the worlds which he drew are built around impossible objects such as the Necker cube and the Penrose triangle. Many of Escher's works employed repeated tilings called Tesselations. Escher's artwork is well-liked by scientists, especially mathematicians who enjoy his use of polyhedra and geometric distortions. For example, in "Gravity", multi-colored dinosaurs poke their heads out of a stellated dodecahedron. His work has been referenced by Matt Groening of The Simpsons fame in his Life in Hell comic. In Groening's parody of Escher's "Relativity," cartoon rabbits Binky and Bongo fall down stairs at impossible angles.
Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach (March 21, 1685 - July 28, 1750) was a German composer, organist and musical scholar of the Baroque period, and is almost universally regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time. His works, noted for their intellectual depth, technical command, and artistic beauty, have provided inspiration to nearly every musician in the European tradition, from Mozart to Schoenberg. It was at Ohrdruf that Bach began to learn about organ building. The Ohrdruf church's instrument, it seems, was in constant need of minor repairs, and young J. S. Bach was often sent into the belly of the old organ to tighten, adjust, or replace various parts. Realizing that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the church organ, with its moving bellows, manifold stops, and complicated mechanical linkages from the keys and pedals to the many actual pipes, was the most complex machine in any European town, we can imagine that Sebastian may have been awed by it much as modern boys are fascinated by cars, trucks, and planes. This hands-on experience with the innards of the instrument would provide a unique counterpoint to his unequalled skill at playing the instrument; J. S. Bach was equally at home talking with organ builders and performers.
Conclusion
Bach's connection to organs makes me think most of Lawrence Waterhouse, and in the Professor Tolkien sense of categorization — GEB comes off as a man.