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Fri 4 Jan, 2008 11:43 pm
After I read Michael Hart's list, I came up with my own list. I know that some of the entries are questionable. So, who would be on your list?
# Mohammed
# Aristotle
# Tsai Lun (credited with the invention of paper)
# Johann Gutenberg
# Jesus of Nazareth
# Paul of Tarsus
# Shih Huang Ti
# Louis Pasteur
# Plato
# Siddhartha Guatama
# Confucius
# Abraham (reportedly the founder of Judaism)
# Isaac Newton
# Sri Krishna (since I included Abraham, I'm going to include him too, his historiocity wasn't challenged until Christian missionaries did so)
# Euclid
# Tim Berners Lee (invented the world wide web (with help))
# Adolf Hitler
# James Watt / Matthew Boulton (Watt invented it, but Boulton manufactured it and made it into big business)
# Constantine I (the Great)
# Genghis Kahn
# Thomas Edison
# Karl Marx
# Alexander the Great
# Albert Einstein
# Nikolai Tesla (invented the radio as found by the Supreme Court & pioneered AC polyphase power distribution system)
# Christopher Columbus
# Hernan Cortes
# Nicolas Copernicus
# Socrates (just because of his reputation)
# Philo T. Farnsworth (invented electronic television that most closely resembles contemporary ones)
# Asoka (for turning Buddhism from a tiny sect into a world religion, brought Mauryan empire to largest land extent)
# Moses
# Augustus Caesar
# Gavrilo Princip (unwittingly, triggered the two World Wars and Cold War)
# Henry Bessemer
# Sui Wen Ti (reunified China)
# Martin Luther
# Umar (greatly expanded the Islamic empire outside of Saudi Arabia and most responsible for establishing the Islamic government of today, and most of his conquests have stayed Muslim)
# Pope Urban II (his speech ignited the Crusades)
# Galileo Galilei
# Sigmund Freud
# St. Thomas Aquinas
# Charles Darwin
# Alexander Graham Bell (telephone would have been invented anyways without him, but still beat Root to it)
# Charlemagne
# Nicolas von Otto (developed a car engine that most closely resembles contemporary ones)
# William the Conqueror
# Francisco Pizarro
# Saint Augustine of Hippo
# James Clerk Maxwell
# Saint Clement of Ohrid (traditionally, credited with the invention of the Cyrillic alphabet)
# Napoleon
# Lao Tse
# Zoroaster
# Galen (his emphasis on investigation and observation influenced Arabic science and he was the leading medical authority in the west for around 1400 years)
# Wilbur & Orville Wright (Wright brothers)
# Bardeen, Brattain, Shockley (invented the transistor)
# Queen Isabella & Ferdinand
# Julius Caesar
# Cyrus II (the Great)
# Menes (started the dynastic tradition of Egypt)
# George Washington
# William Shakespeare
# Steve Jobs / Steve Wozniak (invented the personal computer)
# Jack Kilby / Robert Noyce (for inventing the silicon chip)
# William T. G. Morton
# John Locke
# Sir Alexander Fleming
# Muawiya I (of the Umayyad dynasty)
# Michael Faraday
# Adi Sankara (revived Hinduism after Buddhism and Jainism were starting to take over Southeast Asia)
# Ibn Al-Haytham (Alhacen, "first modern scientist")
# Vladimir Lenin
# Antoine Lavoisier (downgraded because I don't know how much of the credit goes to al-Biruni, etc.)
# Simon Bolivar
# Maharshi Veda Vyasa (I'm going to credit him with the Mahabharata and the Bhagavad Gita or just only the BG)
# Mencius
# Al-Khwarizmi / Leonardo Fibonacci (for their parts in getting the West to adopt the Hindu-Arabic numeral system that is used by most countries in the world today (along with their other influences on math))
# Adam Smith
# Richard Arkwright
# Mao Zedong
# Werner Heisenberg
# Madhavira
# Nagarjuna
# Alan Turing
# John Calvin
# Han Wu Ti ("martial emperor" not the other one)
# Leo Baekeland (invented the first "real" plastic)
# Mani
# Edward Jenner / Lady Montagu
# Joseph Lister
# Louis Daguerre (would have happened anyways, but still beat Fox Talbot to it)
# Du Fu (poet influential in China and Japan)
# Alessandro Volta
# Enrico Fermi
# Johann Karl Frederich Gauss
# Homer (wrote Greece's national epic poems)
# Ferdowsi (wrote Persia's national epic poem)
# Zhu Xi
# Ibn Firnas / Salvino D'Armati (supposed inventors of reading stones and eyeglasses, respectively)
Attila the Hun and Spartacus you bourgeois sycophant.
Tony Hancock?
Richard Pryor?
LOL@ Christopher Columbus.
Yes a Mass murderer. This is the worst list ever.
And again, you can't have a list like this without Leo.
Need I say? And not the character portrayed in Silence of the Lambs...
Kayyam wrote:Stephen Colbert?
I would have to take Stewart before Colbert but both would be allowed on my list.
-Stewart for president.
Should we consider these entries?
Rene Descartes
David Hume
Adam Smith
Immanuel Kant
Karl Marx
Frank P. Ramsey
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Robert Nozick...
Albert Einstein
Dennis Sciama
(...and his student) Stephen Hawking