...that my first thought was "Ah, someone has finally understood why Gödel numbering is clever..."?

No, really, once you get over that fact that calcite has been known for its double refraction property for literally hundreds of years, and every child ever to get its hands on a lump of it trying to make it show weird shit, you'll realize that these people have figured out how to make stuff disappear when you look at it from exactly the right angle... Yawn. The calcite remains visible, obviously, BTW.

Have you considered adding more life to your fiction?

would be a scientist (auto-didact, if that excludes him for you) and is among the youngest people I can think of given your restrictions (31). He has written a few very interesting pieces on AI (Warning: Transhumanist/Singularitan), as well as the best Harry Potter fanfiction I've ever read: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality

For more information see: http://yudkowsky.net/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliezer_Yudkowsky

May I suggest though not to restrict yourself to actual people? "Hero" is a word I use extremely rarely, since I consider that to be a "larger than life, thus fictional" label...