The 15 Most Important People in History

Submitted by 1922 on Sat, 03/18/2006 - 05:42
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  1. Muhammad
  2. Isaac Newton
  3. Jesus Christ
  4. Buddha
  5. Confucius
  6. Saint Paul
  7. Tsai Lun
  8. Johannes Gutenberg
  9. Christopher Columbus
  10. Albert Einstein
  11. Karl Marx
  12. Louis Pasteur
  13. Galileo Galilei
  14. Aristotle
  15. Vladimir Lenin
  19. N.B.: In an updated version (1992), Lenin and Marx were replaced by Euclid (#14) and Moses (#15).
Author Comments: 

According to the mathematician Michael H. Hart.

Your thoughts? Comments? Omissions? Disagree?

bertie03/18/2006

I'm just wondering, as philosophers do, what something means. In this case, I'm wondering what 'important' means. Does Hart define what he means by that word?

bertie03/19/2006

He left out Plato. Apparently he doesn't know how much he contributed to history.

192203/19/2006

Frankly, I've got no idea how he'd define "important".

But yeah, Plato is a gap.

bertie03/19/2006

I've done a little etymological reasearch on 'important' and, not too surprisingly, it is related to 'import' (as in import and export). The gist seems to be the following. Something imported to where its sort of thing has never been before can have far-reaching effects. Think of the import of potatoes and tobacco from South America to Europe (not to mention the diseases that went in the opposite direction). So, 'important' meant and still means 'having far-reaching effects'. And so 'historical importance' means 'having far-reaching effects down through history'. Which is what I meant when I said Plato was important.

192203/19/2006

Oh, interesting. I've never given the word "important" that much thought.

These are actually the 15 first spots taken out of Hart's book The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History. Maybe Plato's ranks among the other 85. I can't find the complete list anywhere. Hart is a mathematician and astrophysicist, so perhaps he doesn't know about Plato's importance.

As you probably know, similar polls were made for various countries, based on public opinion:
- the Netherlands: Pim Fortuyn
- Belgium: Pater Damiaan
- Germany: Konrad Adenauer
- France: Charles de Gaulle
- Canada: Tommy Douglas
- South Africa: Nelson Mandela
- United Kingdom: Sir Winston Churchill
- Finland: C.G.E. Mannerheim
- United States: Ronald Reagan (yes, really!)

lukeprog03/25/2006

Hart's full list is here.

192203/25/2006

WOW, what a find! Thanks so much, Luke. :D