A guess I should pick a nerd or tomboy from history.
Maybe
Emilie du Chatelet? She was a French mathematician, physicist, writer, and feminist during the 1700's. She had an arranged marriage with a guy but it was an open marriage so she had relationships with other men, including a long one with Voltaire. In addition to all of her writings, she once lost the equivalent of $1 million in a hand of cards to a cheater, and resolved that debt by creating the modern day financial derivative to buy rights to future income from tax collectors and sold those rights to her debtors. I dunno, she seems pretty cool to me.
A runner-up might be
Hypatia of Alexandria, a Neoplatonist mathematician, philosopher and teacher in 4th century Egypt. She was the only named female depicted in Raphael's famous
School of Athens painting, and was rather well-known. Her death was terrible though, a mob of Christians tortured her to death in 415.
Artemesia I of Caria was pretty cool too, not a nerd though. She was a naval warrior-queen during the Greco-Persian wars on the side of Persia, though she advised Xerxes
not to attack. Athens had a large bounty on her for anyone who could capture alive, because she was the only female commander in the war and Athens found it intolerable to have a female enemy, but nobody ever captured her. She was probably warlike and not very nice, though.
So I'll stick with Emilie. She seems funny.
