Many young men and women in 19th century Russia used science as an resource for anti-authoritarian rebellion -- unlike the "natural order" promoted by church and state, science could produce its own truths and "unnatural" arrangements. They began a movement in which women arranged ficticious marriages to men to allow them the freedom to leave home. Their critics dubed them "nihilists," and rather than shrink from that title they simply adopted it. The most famous of these nihilists was mathematician Sophia Kovalevsky, who participated in the Paris commune, and brought Poincare to the problem in Celestial mechanics which began chaos theory.

From “Little Sparrow: a portrait of Sophia Kovalevsky” (Kennedy) pg 84: "The nihilist did not so much have formal beliefs as a set of attitudes and values, even extending to manners, dress, and friendship. They tended to avoid organized movements. The nihilist woman usually wore a plain dark wool dress with white collar and cuffs, short hair to avoid the eroticism of long hair and elaborate coiffures (although bobbed hair soon became a widely adopted style). Sometimes they wore blue-smoked glasses. Many were direct to the point of rudeness."

We can see echoes of the nihilist style in the contemporary punk rock movement. Unlike hippies, punks are pro-artifice rebels, enjoying anti-fashion fashions and direct well past the point of rudeness.