Last day for round 14…
Round 14 is over!
The losers are:
Category, Name, # of Votes
I, Antony van Leeuwenhoek, 12
L, Josef Stalin, 6
P, John Locke, 5
R, Moses, 11
S, Johannes Kepler, 7
No real surprised here for me.
However, I noticed that Adam Smith received more votes than Karl Marx… I truly hope that, upon reflection, the good voters in this contest won’t let this happen again. 
It wouldn’t surprise me that the number of **ex-**communists today outnumber the people living in the traditional capitalist West. When your adherents are running to the other guy, it’s hard to make a case for Marx over Smith in this contest.
Imho, of course.
New Categories:
Inventors
Alexander Fleming, Scientist, Invented Penicillin
Edward Jenner, Scientist, Developed Vaccination for Smallpox
James Watt, British Scientist, Invented Steam Engine
Johann Gutenberg, Scientist, Inventor of Printing Press
Thomas Edison, American Scientist, 1,000+ inventions
Ts’ai Lun, Scientist, Inventor of Paper
Leaders
Augustus Caesar, Roman Princep, Founded Roman Empire
Genghis Khan, Mongol Ruler, Founded Mongol Empire
George Washington, American Statesman and General, Fought For Independence of United States
Julius Caesar, Roman General, Ended Roman Civil Wars
Lenin, Russian Leader, Founded Communism in Russia
Napoleon Bonaparte, French Emperor, Waged Napoleonic Wars
Sui Wen Ti, Chinese Emperor, Reunited China
William the Conquerer, Norman Duke and English King, Led In Norman Conquest of England
Philosophers
Adam Smith, Economist, Advocated Capitalism
Aristotle, Greek Philosopher
Confucius, Chinese Philosopher, Founder of Confucianism
Karl Marx, Economist, Founder of Communism
Plato, Greek Philosopher, Developed Platonism
William Shakespeare, English Playwright
Religion
Jesus Christ, Founder of Christianity
Mohammed, Founder of Islam
St Paul, Christian Missionary and Apostle
Sciences
Albert Einstein, Scientist, Physicist, Theory of Relativity
Charles Darwin, British Scientist, Theory of Evolution
Euclid, Greek Mathematician
Isaac Newton, British Scientist, Theory of Universal Gravitation and Motion
Louis Pasteur, Scientist, Pasteurization, Germ Theory of Disease
Max Planck, Scientist, Developed Therodynamics
Michael Faraday, British Scientist, Discovered Electromagnetism
Inventors. Alexander Fleming
Leaders. Lenin
Philosophy. Karl Marx
Religion. Mohammed
Science. Max Planck
Lost three of five. It’s time to put the Communists in the ash heap of history. My genetic identity is impacted by Ghengis and William, but Lenin and Marx were deemed irrelevant just as I was coming of age and when their ideas died, the Cold War died and good riddance to bad rubbish.
Max Planck is the last “easy” vote in his category, not that voting out the last quantum-mechanic is easy. But the rest just exist on a higher plane.
Inventor. Alexander Fleming
Leader. William the Conqueror
Philosophy. Confucius
Religion. St. Paul
Science. Max Planck
Confucius is the only new entrant on my list.
Inventions. Johann Gutenberg
Leader. William the Conquerer
Philosophy. Karl Marx
Religion. Jesus Christ
Science. Michael Faraday
Inventors. Edward Jenner
Leaders. Napoleon Bonaparte
Philosophy. Adam Smith
Religion. Jesus Christ
Science. Max Planck
Let me put in a good word for Faraday, “Greatest experimentalist ever”, who would be famous for the variety and importance of his work in chemistry, even ignoring his revolutionary discoveries in electromagnetism.
Inventors. Alexander Fleming
Leaders. Genghis Khan
Philosophers. Adam Smith
Religion. Mohammed
Sciences. Louis Pasteur
Inventors. Edward Jenner
Leaders. William the Conquerer
Philosophy. Karl Marx
Religion. Jesus Christ
Science. Louis Pasteur
I’m hopping on the Marx bandwagon in an effort to save Adam Smith. He would be at the top of my list among the philosophers along with Aristotle.
Inventors. Edward Jenner
Leaders. Napoleon Bonaparte
Philosophy. Plato
Religion. St. Paul
Science. Max Planck
Inventor. James Watt
Leader. William the Conquerer
Philosophy. Plato
Religion. Paul
Science. Charles Darwin
The Theory of Evolution was important. But once again, it was one of those things that didn’t rely on one person. If Darwin hadn’t been there, Wallace would have published the same idea. In fact if Wallace hadn’t been about to publish his book, Darwin probably wouldn’t have published his.
Invention. Alexander Fleming
Leader. Julius Caesar
Philosophy. Confucius
Religion. Jesus Christ
Science. Max Planck
Two new heads on the chopping block: Fleming because anyone can grow mold, Jesus because of reasons stated earlier.
Communism, like Christianity, only really works on paper. Lenin’s brand of communism was quickly overwhelmed by Stalin – who was a brutal military dictator, not a communist. But heck, I’m still targeting Julius Caesar and Confucius, two blokes that have had next to zero impact on my existence.
Little sad to see John Locke go, he was such a major factor in LOST.
Marx and Smith’s influence had totally different characters, and given that we’re talking about influence here, how many governments were overthrown in the name of Adam Smith? Smith observed, masterfully, processes that were already in existence. Marx (for good or ill) changed the world.
(And Marx’s ideas are not totally dead, either. His emphasis on the importance of economic processes over personalities or explicit ideologies in the study of history is taken as pure common sense today.)
Inventions. Thomas Edison
Leaders. William the Conqueror
Philosophers. Adam Smith
Religion. Jesus Christ
Science. Max Planck
I’d have voted Shakespeare in Philosophy, but given that the OP wanted a Marx vs. Smith throwdown…
Hey, I was five for five that time. Brand new slate:
Inventors. James Watt
Leaders. Julius Caesar
Philosophers. Confucius
Religion. St. Paul
Sciences. Max Planck
Paul was a tough choice. I didn’t feel like Paul and Jesus should both outlast Mohammed, so I had to decide which one of them would go. And although Paul was instrumental in spreading Jesus’ message through his missionary journeys and letters, two things lead me to place him lower than Jesus in total influence:
- Without Jesus, there would have been no Paul
- Without Paul, there probably would still have been a Christian church. Paul was not, by a longshot, the only first-century Christian missionary. Philip, Silas, Barnabas, Demas are also mentioned in the NT as travelling missionaries, and church tradition adds most of the apostles to this list as well. There are a good number of epistles in the New Testament attributed to Paul, but only about half of them have unquestioned authorship: we could just as easily still have the others under a different name if there were no Paul. And of course he did not write any of the Gospels.
I’m going to argue that the influence of Paul is overstated. Peter is the one who opened up Christianity to the Gentiles; Paul just ran with it. Others were travelling around the world spreading the Gospel; Paul just had a good biographer. Peter, James, John and others wrote influential epistles as well; Paul just had more that survived (and others that he didn’t write attributed to him).
Invention. Alexander Fleming
Leaders. Genghis Khan
Philosophy. Karl Marx
Religion. Mohammed
Science. Michael Faraday
Penicillin? Bah! I think I’ve used it maybe once. Now if he had invented Ampicillin or Amoxicillin I’d be thankful and influenced.
Sniff, G’bye Johnny K. He was, in my opinion, the true giant on whose shoulders Newton stood to see further. It’s funny seeing as how Kepler never would have made my number one spot I still want to see the contenders knocked off in the “right” order.
I’ve always felt Stalin’s rule was a natural progression of Lenin’s rule. Lenin concentrated all of the authority in the country into a single organization - he removed all the checks and balances. That was made it possible for Stalin to take over so completely - he didn’t need to take over the Soviet Union because the Bolsheviks had already done that. All Stalin needed to do was take power from a few hundred of his fellow Bolsheviks.
Invention. Alexander Fleming
Leaders. William the Conqueror
Philosophy. Adam Smith
Religion. St. Paul
Science. Michael Faraday
Sorry, John T, but while I much prefer Adam Smith to Marx, SMith wasn’t the INVENTOR of capitalism. He was merely a brilliant describer of a system that sprang up without him. None of the people who made capitalism work were reading Wealth of Nations and using it as a guidebook. But Marx DID invemt communism, and his theories guided all communists after him.
SO, Marx was far more influential than Smith.
Inventions. Thomas Edison
Leaders. Napolean
Philosophers. Adam Smith
Religion. Jesus Christ
Science. Max Planck
Ah, but you have to remember where this all started from: Czarist Russia. The difference between a typical ruthless czar with an iron fist of control (certainly not a description of poor sad, Nicholas II) and Stalin “Man of Steel” is that Stalin didn’t care for ornamentation and wasn’t keen on after dinner conversations. He was a paranoid thug. Lenin’s removal of the trappings of royalty, the slamming down of the Eastern Orthodox Church and the seizing of corporation assets were all part of the plan. He fell ill and died before he could really rule, spending most of his time in civil wars before the Soviet Union was finally established. Stalin was just after the power. The true commie of the group, the “believer” in Marxism, was Leon Trotsky who had to flee Russia and Stalin still had him hunted down and killed.
Sorry for the delay! I thought that yesterday was the scoring day, but apparently it was Friday. Oops.
Round 15 losers:
Category, Name, # of Votes
I, Alexander Fleming, 6
L, William the Conqueror, 6
P, Adam Smith, 5
R, Jesus Christ, 6
S, Max Planck, 8
I was thinking this was going to happen, and it did: The founder of a religion was voted off before his most famous adherent. 
Remaining votes:
Inventors
Edward Jenner, Scientist, Developed Vaccination for Smallpox
James Watt, British Scientist, Invented Steam Engine
Johann Gutenberg, Scientist, Inventor of Printing Press
Thomas Edison, American Scientist, 1,000+ inventions
Ts’ai Lun, Scientist, Inventor of Paper
Leaders
Augustus Caesar, Roman Princep, Founded Roman Empire
Genghis Khan, Mongol Ruler, Founded Mongol Empire
George Washington, American Statesman and General, Fought For Independence of United States
Julius Caesar, Roman General, Ended Roman Civil Wars
Lenin, Russian Leader, Founded Communism in Russia
Napoleon Bonaparte, French Emperor, Waged Napoleonic Wars
Sui Wen Ti, Chinese Emperor, Reunited China
Philosophy
Aristotle, Greek Philosopher
Confucius, Chinese Philosopher, Founder of Confucianism
Karl Marx, Economist, Founder of Communism
Plato, Greek Philosopher, Developed Platonism
William Shakespeare, English Playwright
Religion
Mohammed, Founder of Islam
St Paul, Christian Missionary and Apostle
Science
Albert Einstein, Scientist, Physicist, Theory of Relativity
Charles Darwin, British Scientist, Theory of Evolution
Euclid, Greek Mathematician
Isaac Newton, British Scientist, Theory of Universal Gravitation and Motion
Louis Pasteur, Scientist, Pasteurization, Germ Theory of Disease
Michael Faraday, British Scientist, Discovered Electromagnetism