I would be interested in hearing what exploits in particular that the person did inspired you to take them on as a role model. To me a role model would not just be someone who does good work, but someone who you would aspire to emulate. There would have to be something special about what they did and perhaps more importantly how and why they did it that inspired you to want to be like them.

So to take your list of people for example, someone like John Carmack. What I was looking for was what specific exploits were you talking about and why they were so inspirational to you. Maybe it was his work creating the Doom and Quake games, or his bootstrap work building id software from scratch, or his contributions to free software by releasing his engines under gpl, or his quakeworld talks, or his work with rocketry, or his new work with VR, or his general overall attitude about life, programming and everything.

I mean there had to be something special about him for you to want to be like him, and that seems like something that would be worth telling a little story about.

Those are, personality-wise, three radically different people I listed and I don't think anyone who knows about them could consistently want to "be like" all three of them. I thought they did interesting and important work and had an exciting role to play, indicative of an important field.

We might have a disagreement about the meaning of "role model," which is fine. I don't really think that's the point at all...

Edit: Thomas's "cognitively available success cases" seems like a good one to me