I think you've found your nerd :)
An Oxford cleric, still a student though,
One who had taken logic long ago,
Was there; his horse was thinner than a rake,
And he was not too fat, I undertake,
But had a hollow look, a sober stare;
The thread upon his overcoat was bare.
He had found no preferment in the church
And he was too unworldly to make search
For secular employment. By his bed
He preferred having twenty books in red
And black, of Aristotle’s philosophy,
Than costly clothes, fiddle, or psaltery.
Though a philosopher, as I have told,
He had not found the stone for making gold.
Whatever money from his friends he took
He spent on learning or another book
And prayed for them most earnestly, returning
Thanks to them thus for paying for his learning.
His only care was study, and indeed
He never spoke a word more than was need,
Formal at that, respectful in the extreme,
Short, to the point, and lofty in his theme.
A tone of moral virtue filled his speech
And gladly would he learn, and gladly teach.

One of the modern transliteration of Cantenbury Tales and character of the Clerk/Cleric.

There's nothing wrong in asking questions, even if they seem superficial. You are not ignorant, lack of knowledge is ignorance only when you are content with it.

I'd advise you to seek in Universities.

Medieval public perception of students fits your description, maybe sans weak build- student's brawls often end in bloodshed. In high medieval period students and professors made a small, but significant and easy to spot group of nearly every capital since having university was a status symbol for every ruler. They had even own brotherhoods, rituals, initiation ceremonies, slang, inside humour much like our modern "nerds"- really they just lacked newspapers due to lack of printed press :)

Was it an option only for rich? Not exactly- lots of the students were baked by well-off families and monasteries, but there was no social division. Education was a ticket for better life (especially if you planned to become churchman) so many young men joined. Lots of the universities offered a common room for sleeping and sometimes a daily meal. To earn for other things poorer students resorted to begging (that caused some mockery from richer colleagues but not real shame). Most of the students finally moved forward to establish own career in Church or somewhere else (as medics, diplomats, officials) but it wasn't unheard of those who had chosen student's lifestyle for life, studying otherwise useless books.

I suspect that Leo Moulin and his La vie des étudiants au Moyen Âge wasn't translated into English?

Edit: I've added some details to clear the subject. Thanks for format tip :)

hi! you might get a few more ideas from these older posts

• What did geek types do before the 20th century?

• from our sister sub /r/AskAnthropology: I presume that what we now call "nerds" existed in pre-20th-century times... but what were they doing?

Others have mentioned a few literary examples, but there's at least one real major figure who seems to check off a number of what I would consider the traits of the archetypical 'nerd' - John Milton.

Firstly, he spent many of his years of adulthood after finishing at Cambridge more or less living off his father's money in his father's house pursuing his own reading and private study over performing any trade or doing anything much of use, and it took him many years before he decided to eventually leave home and even longer to find a wife, so we have the 'arrested adolescence' down.

At school he didn't participate in any sports, rarely ventured out, and wore his hair long in contradiction to the prevailing fashion, something he would do all his life, which made him something of an eccentric among those who were fervent supporters of Oliver Cromwell since they generally took up shaven or close-cropped looks, while long locks were generally indicative of (or at least seen to be the fashion of) supporters of the monarchy. His pale complexion, long hair, and habits were such that he was apparently called 'the lady of Cambridge' or possibly 'lady of Christ's [college]' by his peers at school. We also know he definitely disdained and felt alienated from his fellow students - but with the probably-not-endearing nickname we can maybe even speculatively add 'bullied at school by the tougher boys' to our list. But, again, speculative, the only certain thing is that he was totally a pencil-neck.

I bring this up all the more because, even more appropriately emblematic of the Robert E. Howard or Frank Miller style of nerd who makes up for a personal lack of traditionally masculinity with hyperbolic and fanciful masculinities to project out into the world, later in life Milton took up writing political tracts. One such tract, on the education of boys, advocated something that was more or less a boot camp style regimen of training for boys advising universal and exhausting instruction in horseback riding, the martial arts, and all sorts of other things he avoided like the plague when he was growing up.

I suspect if you look at various literary and scientific figures of the past 400 years you'll find other figures who equally fit a number of stereotypes (I assume it's not for nothing that people have tried to post-humously diagnose Newton with Asperger's, though I've never studied his life in detail), but I mainly wanted to post because something about Milton as the archetypical prissy intellectual with the hypocritically macho ideas never ceases to tickle me for some reason.

You could also take a look at SARTOR RESARTUS: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh by Thomas Carlyle (published as a series between 1831 and 1834 in Frasier's Magazine). It's a Poioumenon, telling us about Diogenes Teufelsdröckh's (which sounds like "devils dirt") -- professor in the German town Weissnichwo (= I have no idea where) -- efforts to write the philosophical treatise "Die Kleider, ihr Werden und Wirken (Clothes, their Origin and Influence)" - a topic, nobody cares about in the real world, obviously.

The professor is quite the nerd:

He lives in the proverbial ivory tower, "the attic floor of the highest house in the Wahngasse; and [his domicile] might truly be called the pinnacle of Weissnichtwo", far away from the live of the ordinary people: '"I look down into all that wasp-nest or bee-hive," we have heard him say, "and witness their wax-laying and honey-making, and poison-brewing, and choking by sulphur. [...]"'. He has distanced himself so far from everyday life, that to " the most, indeed, he had become not so much a Man as a Thing".

While he is distant from everyday life and the people in his town, he is very smart: "As for Teufelsdrockh, except by his nightly appearances at the Grune Gans, Weissnichtwo saw little of him, felt little of him. Here, over his tumbler of Gukguk, he sat reading Journals; sometimes contemplatively looking into the clouds of his tobacco-pipe, without other visible employment: always, from his mild ways, an agreeable phenomenon there; more especially when he opened his lips for speech; on which occasions the whole Coffee-house would hush itself into silence, as if sure to hear something noteworthy. Nay, perhaps to hear a whole series and river of the most memorable utterances; such as, when once thawed, he would for hours indulge in, with fit audience: and the more memorable, as issuing from a head apparently not more interested in them, not more conscious of them, than is the sculptured stone head of some public fountain, which through its brass mouth-tube emits water to the worthy and the unworthy; careless whether it be for cooking victuals or quenching conflagrations; indeed, maintains the same earnest assiduous look, whether any water be flowing or not."

As Carlyle's book (or series of articles) is a satire, it becomes very clear, that certain men during his lifetime were seen in such a manner that we would call nerdy today. It should be noted that Teufelsdrockh is a scientist, an occupation/a field of interest that nowadays has become associated with the term "nerd" as well. Also, you find the connection with "genius", which is likewise important.

Carlyle mocks a certain number of topics in his book, among them the so called German Bildungsbürgertum, a certain class of people that identified strongly over their academic background -- you could also say that about nerds. It has to be considered, that the members of the Bildungsbürgertum were usually highly distinguished by the majority of (the German) society, though. Carlyle's publication, on the other hand, provides us with evidence, that at least a certain group of Bildungsbürger, at least in certain circles, were seen as weltfremd (I have no idea how to translate this term properly, I'm afraid, it means that they have difficulties coping with everyday life in a manner, that most people would consider normal. It is also used to discribe a train of thought that seems to have no connection to real life as well), and seem to have been the nerds of the time. (Sidenote to myself: It would be interesting to see, how/if the Bildungsbürgertum and its portrayal influenced the modern notion of nerds...)

I'm not a historian but an academic in consumer culture and marketing. I have written a blog summarising a paper I recently wrote about the etymology of the word geek and how the meaning has changed in modern consumer culture. You can find it here: http://review.ehl.lu.se/the-new-snob/