I LOVED Revenge of the Nerds! "Where did you learn THAT?! Well, it's all we think about." And this books sounds like lots of fun! Math and Science were my best subjects, though I did well in English, also.
My degree is in History and I'VE never heard of her. Granted, that's not an era I concentrated on, you'd think I would have at least heard of her in passing...
Honestly, truth is often much stranger than fiction! Sometimes I read something and think, there's no way that could really happen, but a book is like TV or the movies, it's a book and sometimes it's okay to stretch the imagination and therefore, the "truth". ;)