This is GD “Who is the most influential person of all time?” Discussing the Time list is better suited to BBQ Pit. Michael Hart’s list is enormously better (peraps better, IMO, than SDMB’s list from 4 years ago.)
On Hart’s list, St. Paul ranks #5 . Isabella the Catholic is #65 . Machiavelli is #79 .
I like the criterion: “How different would the world have been without the person.” One famous scientist being “ahead of his time” argues against his influence, as I argued in “Who, in all of human history, has had the greatest impact upon modern society?”
A key question is: How long would a discovery have been delayed if its discoverer hadn’t lived? In the case of Mendel, we know the answer: 35 years. A rather long delay, I think, given the simplicity and importance of Mendel’s discovery to the understanding of genetics and evolution. For this reason, Mendel could be called a great discoverer.
Unfortunately, the fact that we know the delay would have been 35 years argues against Mendel’s influence. The only reason we know exactly how long the delay would have been is that … there was such a delay. Though published in a scientific journal, Mendel’s discovery was completely ignored for 35 years. :smack:
Mendel’s Laws were an “idea whose time had come” … 35 years after Mendel’s discovery … when four separate researchers independently discovered the Laws and/or stumbled on Mendel’s paper.