# The 100 Most Influential People - Try the Third **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [April 14, 2010, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-100-most-influential-people-try-the-third/536080 "2010-04-14T16:58:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 36
**Author:** ![Uncle\_Goat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Uncle\_Goat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uncle_Goat)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2010, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-100-most-influential-people-try-the-third/536080/701 "2010-06-29T02:02:08Z")
A fine time indeed. Like so many things, my votes would change depending on I how I felt – or how the dice feel in some cases – but for the most part the SD list strikes me as more realistic than Hart’s. I remain confused that Hart was willing to rate Hitler and Stalin but not Churchill and FDR. Ah well. Each to list as he chooses. Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2010, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-100-most-influential-people-try-the-third/536080/702 "2010-06-30T00:52:31Z")
I took the top 20 from the SDMB list and the top 20 from Hart’s list and merged them. Here they are in alphabetical order: Albert Einstein physicist; relativity; Einsteinian physics Antoine Laurent Lavoisier father of modern chemistry; philosopher; economist Aristotle influential Greek philosopher Augustus Caesar ruler Buddha founder of Buddhism Charles Darwin biologist; described Darwinian evolution Christopher Columbus explorer; led Europe to Americas Confucius founder of Confucianism Euclid mathematician; Euclidian geometry Galileo Galilei astronomer; accurately described heliocentric solar system Genghis Khan SDMB 8 George Washington SDMB 6 Isaac Newton Physicst, Mathematician James Watt SDMB 10 Jesus Christ founder of Christianity Johann Gutenberg developed movable type; printed Bibles Karl Marx SDMB 20 Lenin SDMB 17 Louis Pasteur scientist; pasteurization Moses major prophet of Judaism Mohammad Prophet of Islam; conqueror of Arabia Nicolaus Copernicus astronomer; taught heliocentricity Plato SDMB 11 Shih Huang Ti Chinese emperor St Paul Judaism; Christianity Sui Wen Ti, unified China, SDMB 13 Thomas Edison SDMB 15 Ts’ai Lun inventor of paper Those compiling a personal top 10 list might choose from among these candidates. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2010, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-100-most-influential-people-try-the-third/536080/703 "2010-06-30T02:19:26Z")
My ten (ranked, hurredly): 1. Aristotle 2. Isaac Newton 3. Gutenberg 4. James Watt 5. Euclid 6. Jesus Christ 7. Louis Pastuer 8. St. Paul 9. Thomas Edison 10. Mohammed ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2010, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-100-most-influential-people-try-the-third/536080/704 "2010-06-30T02:52:03Z")
Obviously I don’t think much of leaders. When I went through the rounds, I had three different criteria I used to make my selections: 1. Originality of idea 2. # of people affected 3. Turning points The only two leaders which may have broken my top 10 would be Washington or Alexander the Great, for #3 and 2 respectively. My criteria show a bias towards scientists and inventors, but that’s who I am. Aristotle, to me, holds all three criteria in spades. His ideas are world-changingly original for his time. As one of the “fathers” of the Greco-Roman branch of Western Civilization, tens of billions of people have been affected by Aristotle’s ideas (most of them without knowing it), and his rationalist-scientific approach to the natural world was a turning point for all mankind. Gutenberg is a turning point. In 1455, Europe had maybe 10 million books, scrolls, etc, about 1/2 of all written material in the world. By 1600, Europe had over 150,000,000 printed books (88% of the worlds store of knowledge) and innumerable pamphlets, brochures, flyers, and bromides. Combine this explosion of knowledge in a civilization that appreciates the Greek rationalist approach (and is ready to add modifications of its own), and it’s no surprise that 200 years after the presses invention, Newton, the winner of the SDMB voting, appeared. Newton defies the categories - his triumph is showing what one could achieve in this new scientific age, from explaining why things fall down to making better telescopes, Newton generates awe in the _completeness_ of his ideas. He showed mankind that the world, _all of it_, was open to our understanding… and our use. And he did so in a civilization with tens of thousands of printing presses and tens of millions of literate citizens. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2010, 6:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-100-most-influential-people-try-the-third/536080/705 "2010-06-30T06:23:46Z")
The exercise was harder than I thought, probably because I never worked out what “Influence” meant. (I see that **JohnT** has offered a pretty fair presentation though.) Partly, I used the counterfactual approach: I asked what would have happened if you took the individual out of history. But mostly I shuffled the goalposts around as necessary. Here they are: 1 Mohammad 2 St Paul Religious types deserve top ranking, if only because of their overwhelming share of the human mind-space. Mohammad beats Christianity because his genius was literary, religious and political. I judge St. Paul to be necessary for Christianity to take hold: Jesus of Nazareth was merely born into the role, as it were. Alternatively, I ascribe a substantial share of his teachings to those who came before and after him. 3 Johann Gutenberg See above. The printshop is prerequisite for the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution. It was a precursor to the Industrial Revolution, an application of interchangeable parts and the American system of manufacture. Lose communication and you lose modernity. 4 Aristotle The first methodical thinker. A precursor to empiricism. Unfortunately, his philosophical work pushed deduction. 5 Francis Bacon The father of empiricism, the scientific method, the advocate of induction. Or anyway, this _would_ be his ranking, if I could actually claim that. But Bacon was born in 1561, 100 years after Copernicus. His contemporary Galileo did fine without being overly influenced by him, to my knowledge. So consider this false entry to be a marker of sorts. 5 Confucius 6 Alexander Confucius also possesses a lot of mindshare, as does Tao. Alexander wins the conqueror contest because he pushed Greek ideas deep into the Asian continent while the most successful invader (Genghis Khan) didn’t have a comparable _cultural_ influence. Nor did Caesar, I would argue. 7 Jesus Christ 8 Nicolaus Copernicus Well I had to put the Man from Nazareth somewhere! Copernicus was the first scientist to base a major counter-intuitive result from empirical observation, thus permitting the idea of science. 9 Isaac Newton 10 Buddha 11 Shakespeare? 12 Darwin? Newton loses to Copernicus because the idea of Science was firmly established by the time he was born. But Newton showed the possibilities of successful science, as well as being an intellectual champion of the highest order. The Buddha secures this ranking because he is a) a religious figure who b) influenced Hinduism. Buddhism itself is a once major religion that is now a noteworthy religion. That was my first cut anyway. Debate is welcome! ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2010, 8:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-100-most-influential-people-try-the-third/536080/706 "2010-06-30T08:46:16Z")
Regarding Copernicus and Kepler: Earlier I rated Kepler as very influential and Copernicus much less so, but have changed my mind and now agree more with Hart and Measure for Measure (though not enough to put Copernicus in the Top Ten). Kepler’s work and discovery were very brilliant, but perhaps inconsequential! His Laws would have been, for Newton, trivial corollaries of Newton’s more general laws. I think I demoted Copernicus believing claims that Indian and Islamic astronomers had developed heliocentricism earlier but those claims are mostly seen on the Internet only at … Indian and Islamic sites! It appears true that Copernicus borrowed heavily from Islamic mathematicians, but that may not diminish his influence. One can Google for other lists of most influential scientists or influential people in general. Most of those lists (unjustly?) rate Kepler much higher than Copernicus. Niels Bohr ranks as very influential on other lists; Hart placed him down at #100 in his first edition, then removed him altogether. Dopers ranked Einstein and Planck as the most influential post-Maxwell scientists; this seems very reasonable to me; is it? One point to note about Hart’s criterion is that he considers _future_ influence. Einstein had no influence whatsoever before the 20th century so might be ranked low, but Hart considers his 21st, 22nd, 23rd century influence, etc. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2010, 9:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-100-most-influential-people-try-the-third/536080/707 "2010-06-30T09:39:04Z")
My Top Eight are all drawn from **Measure for Measure** ’s Top Ten (ignoring his duplicated-5 Bacon :dubious: ). The two of his I want to reject are: > [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#): > > 6 Alexander > Alexander wins the conqueror contest because he pushed Greek ideas deep into the Asian continent … > > 8 Nicolaus Copernicus I put Qin Shi Huang and Augustus Caesar at the top of my leaders list. Since Persia and Egypt were probably due to be Hellenized anyway, and China never was, by “deep into the Asian continent” I think you mean specifically India. I don’t see that development as so consequential. Agreeing on Newton and Aristotle as the two most influential scientists, I have trouble picking a #3, but Galileo, Pasteur and Einstein would be those who round out my Top Five scientists. And it’s tempting to accept Hart’s choice of Ts’ai Lun. We don’t know he was essential to the invention of paper, but then, isn’t Gutenberg’s own uniqueness also unclear? Thus my Top Eight are Mohammed, St. Paul, Newton, Aristotle, Confucius, Jesus, Gutenberg, Buddha. If forced to make this Ten, I guess I’d add Einstein and Pasteur. ---
**Author:** ![sohvan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/96bed5/32.png) [@sohvan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sohvan)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2010, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-100-most-influential-people-try-the-third/536080/708 "2010-06-30T16:08:51Z")
I’d add to the list **Nikola Tesla** - For alternating current and the radio among other things **Norman Borlaug** - Groundbreaking research in agriculture to develop higher yield and disease resistant grains. Also known as the father of the green revolution **Alain Turing** - For his work in computer science, formalisation of the algorithm, and breaking the enigma code in WWII. Without Turing the World War might have ended very differently for the british and Europe. Someone should definitely get on the list for the invention of the transistor, but I’m not sure who. There were many people involved. 1. Gutenberg 2. Isaac Newton 3. James Watt 4. Tsai Lun 5. Louis Pasteur 6. Aristotle 7. Mohammed 8. Euclid 9. Augustus Caesar 10. Einstein I’m definitely biased toward the scientists and engineers. Paul and Jesus would both be somewhere very close to the top 10. As for the leaders, I think Alexander is somewhat overrated historically, though still very important. Sure he was a supreme conqueror, but his reign was very short lived, and his empire didn’t outlive him. The romans idolized him as a perfect leader, and that’s partly to blame for Alexander’s legendary status. Alexander’s most significant contribution was spreading greek culture to the east. Without that he would be just another conqueror, and history has plenty of those. The Roman Empire on the other hand is very influential in the history of European Civilization, and European countries have had a huge impact on the entire world since the 1500s. Many of the languages, modes of government, justice systems and cultures of Europe bear the legacy of the Roman Empire. Roman roads were still an important mode of travel for a long time after the Empire had collapsed, and a large part of the world still uses the latin alphabet. Augustus is important because unlike Alexander, he acted to build a lasting Empire. That’s not to say the Roman Empire was necessarily good, as it involved many terrible things, but influence isn’t a moral judgment. Thanks again for organizing this! It was great fun, and made me re-evaluate my opinion on several historical people. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2010, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-100-most-influential-people-try-the-third/536080/709 "2010-07-04T00:20:42Z")
Help fight my ignorance regarding Caesar. In [218BC](http://www.roman-empire.net/maps/empire/extent/218bc.html), the Roman Empire was roughly modern day Italy. By [100 BC](http://www.roman-empire.net/maps/empire/extent/100bc-2.html) it covered parts of Spain, southern France, Tunisia in North Africa, and parts of Yugoslavia, Turkey and Iraq. [Caesar conquered](http://www.roman-empire.net/maps/empire/extent/caesar.html) most of Spain, Portugal, France and more of North Africa. Afterwards [Rome kept expanding](http://www.roman-empire.net/maps/empire/extent/augustus.html). I had thought of Caesar as just another successful Roman Emperor. Wasn’t Rome’s expansion in some way inevitable? Is Caesar a place-holder for the Roman Empire or did he play a more individual role? Wikipedia notes that he played a critical role in transforming the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. Ookay, but it seems to me that Rome was plenty expansionary both before and after his rule. **sohvan** and **septimus** : Nice contrast of the Greek and Roman empires. Looks like we might want to downgrade poor Alexander. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2010, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-100-most-influential-people-try-the-third/536080/710 "2010-10-23T16:16:47Z")
Fresh brains! Anyway, I’m moving next week and while yanking books out of the bookcase what do I see but my copy of _Life Magazine’s “The 100 Most Important Events and People of the Past 1,000 Years”_ (which was published in 1999). While the timeline scope is more limited than that in this game, I thought it might be of interest to participants of this thread… People first: 1. Carolus Linnaus 2. Kwame Nkruman 3. Ibn Khaldun 4. Catherin De Medicis 5. Jacques Cousteau 6. Santiage Ramon Y Cajal 7. John Von Neumann 8. Leo Tolstoy 9. Roger Bannister 10. Nelson Mandela 11. Walt Disney 12. Claudio Mointeverdi 13. Elizabeth I 14. Theodor Herzl 15. Hokusai 16. Helen Keller 17. Raphael 18. Suan B. Anthony 19. Edwin Hubble 20. Phineas T. Barnum 21. Antione-Laurent Lavoisier 22. Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre 23. Pablo Picasso 24. Peter the Great 25. Andrea Palladio 26. Marie Curie 27. Adam Smith 28. Jalal Ad-Din Ar-Rumi 29. Simone De Beauvoir 30. Ibn Sina 31. Michael Faraday 32. Louis Armstrong 33. Matteo Ricci 34. Cao Xeuqin 35. Jane Addams 36. Firam Maxim 37. Pope Innocent III 38. John Harrison 39. Guido of Arezzo 40. William the Conqueror 41. Otto Von Bismarck 42. Fan Kuan 43. Immanuel Kant 44. Nikola Tesla 45. Louis XIV 46. Frederick Douglass 47. Joan of Arc 48. Niels Bohr 49. Jean-Jacques Rousseau 50. John D. Rockefeller 51. Dante 52. Marco Polo 53. Akbar 54. John Locke 55. Gregor Mendel 56. Zhu Xi 57. Ibn Battuta 58. Joseph Lister 59. Hernan Cortes 60. Florence Nightingale 61. John Calvin 62. Samuel Morse 63. Suleyman the Magnificent 64. Vasco Da Gama 65. Michaelangelo 66. Abraham Lincoln 67. Thomas Aquinas 68. Ludwig Van Beethoven 69. Rene Descartes 70. Alexander Graham Bell 71. Martin Luther King Jr 72. Vladimir Lenin 73. Mao Zedong 74. Marconi 75. Mary Wollstonecraft 76. Simon Bolivar 77. James Madison 78. Kublai Khan 79. Mohandas Gandhi 80. Albert Einstein 81. The Wright Brothers 82. Copernicus 83. Karl Marx 84. Richard Arkwright 85. Sigmund Freud 86. Henry Ford 87. Zheng He 88. Adolf Hitler 89. Napoleon 90. Shakespeare 91. Thomas Jefferson 92. Charles Darwin 93. Louis Pastuer 94. Magellan 95. Isaac Newton 96. Leonardo Da Vinci 97. Galileo 98. Martin Luther 99. Christopher Columbus 100. Thomas Edison Interesting that the discoverers ranked much more highly than we at the SDMB placed them… in my opinion, they’re ranked WAY too high on the _Life_ list. Edison is a very surprising #1, and the absence of Watt (and Adam Smith) is quite bizarre. Unfortunately, I clicked “Post Message” before I could give you _Life’s_ reasoning, which you will find in the next post… ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2010, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-100-most-influential-people-try-the-third/536080/711 "2010-10-23T16:28:41Z")
Here is _Life’s_ reasoning behind the 100 people list… > [@](#): > > **The 100 People Who Made the Millennium** > > What, no Babe Ruth? How, you ask, could a list of the millennium’s most important people not include the Sultan of Swat? Plenty of other monarchs failed to make the lineup as well. To get on this team, a person had to change more than a corner of the world - he or she had to divert the great stream of human history, alter our perceptions perceptible. A runner edged out Ruth (and Jackie Robinson) by setting a new standard for any owner of two legs. You’ll find his name at No. 92 on the the following list, which ranks the honorees by importance. Many names will be familiar from the events section, but not all. A few - Watt, Koch, Gutenberg - appear there but not here. Some of history’s paramount figures are remembered more for a single accomplishment (such as ushering in the age of print) than for the force of their personalities. > > Though the actions of the individuals who made the list affected all kinds of people, they are an overwhelmingly male, pale bunch. All but 17 are of European extraction; only 10 are women. This reflects not the biases of LIFE’s editors and expert advisers, but the sociopolitical realities of the past thousand years. For most of that time, as Virginia Woolf noted, women have served largely as “looking-glasses… reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.” Likewise, the millenniums most conspicuous historical movement has been the rise of the West - which means that Westerners, often borrowing ideas and technology from other peoples, have doen a disproportionate amount of global moving and shaking. The next millennium’s list of planet-rattlers promises to look strikingly different. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2010, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-100-most-influential-people-try-the-third/536080/712 "2010-10-23T16:58:49Z")
Here is _Life_ Magazines top-100 Events of the last Millennium: 1. The Gregorian Calendar 2. Elvis and the birth of Rock 'n Roll 3. Finding the Rosetta Stone 4. The Olympics 5. Publishing of Don Quixote 6. The First Museum (England, 1659) 7. Sinking of Spanish Armada 8. Development of Anathesia 9. The Ottoman Empire 10. Haiti’s Revolution (1791) 11. Invention of Plastic 12. The Mali Empire 13. Modern Art 14. Commodore Perry in Japan 15. Indian Independence 16. Saving Aristotle (Ibn Rushd translating works from Greek to Arabic) 17. Development of Accounting 18. The First Novel (The Tale of Genji) 19. Modern Advertising (Coca-Cola highlighted) 20. 17th Century South American Silver Rush 21. Suez Canal 22. Rise of the Welfare State 23. Coffee 24. Invention of the Elevator 25. Discovery of DNA 26. Chartes (and the European Gothic movement of the medieval era) 27. Simon Bolivar’s wars of liberation 28. Development of concept of “Fashion” 29. Development of Workers Rights 30. Angkor Wat 31. Rise of Environmental movement (Silent Spring highlighted) 32. Development of science of Anatomy (Vesalius) 33. Pentacostalism 34. Invention of Sewing Machine 35. Splendor of Tenochtitlan 36. Development of Perspective in art 37. The Long March 38. Invention of Dynamite 39. Bessemer Steel 40. Invention of X-Rays 41. Invention of the Toilet (Modern Sanitation) 42. The First Newspaper 43. Development of Rubber 44. Development of Birth Control 45. The First Restaurant 46. Childhood Found (invention of concept of childhood as a separate stage of development, 17th century) 47. Introduction of Tobacco in global marketplace 48. Invention of Frozen Foods 49. Development of accurate clocks and watches 50. The US Civil War 51. Invention of the University 52. Discovery of the Circulation of Blood 53. Invention of Canned Foods 54. The Oil Industry 55. Water Purification 56. Russia turning Communist 57. Invention of the Microscope 58. Development of the Well-Tempered Scale (JS Bach) 59. Discovery of Laws of Heredity 60. Invention of the Telegraph 61. Development of Women’s Rights 62. Discovery and Transplantation of the Potato 63. Marx meeting Engels 64. Invention of Photography 65. Theory of Relativity (E=MC^2) 66. Shakespeare’s Plays 67. The French Revolution 68. Landing of Men on Moon 69. Invention of Motion Pictures 70. Freud and the invention of Psychology 71. Invention of the Transistor 72. Ghengis Khan runs rampant 73. Tea 74. Invention of Heavier-Than-Air flight 75. WW1 76. Invention of Radio and wireless communication 77. Invention of the Railroads 78. Discovery of Gravity Theory by Newton 79. Invention of Penicillin 80. The Black Plague 81. Invention of the Telephone 82. Magna Carta 83. The Crusades 84. Ford’s Model T 85. Invention of Atomic Bombs 86. Darwin Develops Theory of Evolution 87. Television 88. Vaccinations 89. Slavery, and the efforts to end it 90. Thomas Edison’s career (electric lights, especially, but also mentioned in #32) 91. Invention of the Compass and its aid to mariners 92. Hitler/WW2 93. Declaration of Independence 94. Development of Gunpowder Weapons 95. Development of Germ Theory 96. Galileo’s Telescope 97. The Industrial Revolution 98. The Protestant Reformation 99. The Discovery of America by Columbus 100. The Invention of the Printing Press ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2021, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-100-most-influential-people-try-the-third/536080/713 "2021-05-21T19:15:51Z")
Guys and gals, it’s been over a decade since I ran this game and am wondering if there is an interest in doing a new one, this time with an updated list (say, we lop off the bottom 25 of our 2010 list and add other, more worthy people)? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-100-most-influential-people-try-the-third/536080.md?page=35)