The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History

[Caitanyachandra 0]

Intersting list here. Moohammed is put at #1 for founding Zorastrainistic ISLAM. NEWTON IS PUT AT #2 for theory of universal gravitation and motional laws (note he was not the first to discover gravitity by any means)!

 

http://www.adherents.com/adh_influ.html

 

1

Muhammad

Islam

Prophet of Islam; conqueror of Arabia; Hart

recognized that ranking Muhammad first might be

controversial, but felt that, from a secular historian's

perspective, this was the correct choice because

Muhammad is the only man to have been both a

founder of a major world religion and a major

military/political leader.

2

Isaac Newton

Anglican (rejected Trinitarianism;

believed in the Arianism of

the Primitive Church) *

physicist; theory of universal gravitation;

laws of motion

3

Jesus Christ *

Judaism; Christianity

founder of Christianity

4

Buddha

Hinduism; Buddhism

founder of Buddhism

5

Confucius

Confucianism

founder of Confucianism

6

St. Paul

Judaism; Christianity

proselytizer of Christianity

7

Ts'ai Lun

Chinese traditional religion

inventor of paper

8

Johann Gutenberg

Catholic

developed movable type; printed Bibles

9

Christopher

Columbus

Catholic

explorer; led Europe to Americas

10

Albert Einstein

Jewish *

physicist; relativity; Einsteinian physics

11

Louis Pasteur

Catholic

scientist; pasteurization

12

Galileo Galilei

Catholic *

astronomer; accurately described

heliocentric solar system

13

Aristotle

Platonism / Greek philosophy

influential Greek philosopher

14

Euclid

Platonism / Greek philosophy

mathematician; Euclidian geometry

15

Moses

Judaism

major prophet of Judaism

16

Charles Darwin

Anglican (nominal)

biologist; described Darwinian evolution,

which had theological impact on many

religions

17

Shih Huang Ti

Chinese traditional religion

Chinese emperor

18

Augustus Caesar

Roman state paganism

ruler

19

Nicolaus

Copernicus

Catholic (priest)

astronomer; taught heliocentricity

20

Antoine Laurent

Lavoisier

Catholic *

father of modern chemistry; philosopher;

economist

21

Constantine the

Great

Roman state paganism; Christianity

Roman emperor who made Christianity the

state religion

22

James Watt

nonreligious *

developed steam engine

23

Michael Faraday

Sandemanian

physicist; chemist; discovery of

magneto-electricity

24

James Clerk

Maxwell

Presbyterian; Anglican; Baptist *

physicist; electromagnetic spectrum

25

Martin Luther

Catholic; Lutheran

founder of Protestantism and

Lutheranism

26

George Washington

Episcopalian; Deist

first president of United States

27

Karl Marx

Jewish; Christian;

Atheist; Marxism/Communism *

founder of Communism

28

Orville and Wilbur

Wright

Protestant (nominal?) *

inventors of airplane

29

Genghis Khan

Mongolian shamanism

Mongol conqueror

30

Adam Smith

Liberal Protestant

economist; expositor of capitalism; religious

philosopher

31

Edward de Vere

Christianity *

literature; also wrote 6 volumes about

philosophy and religion; William

Shakespeare?

32

John Dalton

Quaker

chemist; physicist; atomic theory; law of

partial pressures (Dalton's law)

33

Alexander the

Great

Greek state paganism

conqueror

34

Napoleon

Bonaparte

Catholic (nominal) *

French conqueror

35

Thomas Edison

Congregationalist; agnostic *

inventor of light bulb, phonograph, etc.

36

Antony van

Leeuwenhoek

Calvinist *

microscopes; studied microscopic life

37

William T.G.

Morton

??

pioneer in anesthesiology

38

Guglielmo Marconi

Catholic and Anglican *

inventor of radio

39

Adolf Hitler

Catholic; Nazism

conqueror; led Axis Powers in WWII

40

Plato

Platonism / Greek philosophy

founder of Platonism

41

Oliver Cromwell

Puritan (Protestant)

British political and military leader

42

Alexander Graham

Bell

Unitarian-Universalist

inventor of telephone

43

Alexander Fleming

Catholic

penicillin; advances in bacteriology,

immunology and chemotherapy

44

John Locke

raised Puritan (Anglican);

Liberal Christian

philosopher and liberal theologian

45

Ludwig van

Beethoven

Catholic

composer

46

Werner Heisenberg

*

discovered the principle of uncertainty

47

Louis Daguerre

??

an inventor/pioneer of photography

48

Simon Bolivar

Catholic (nominal); Atheist *

National hero of Venezuela, Colombia,

Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia

49

Rene Descartes *

Catholic

Rationalist philosopher and mathematician

50

Michelangelo

Catholic

painter; sculptor

51

Pope Urban II

Catholic

called for First Crusade

52

'Umar ibn

al-Khattab

Islam

Second Caliph; expanded Muslim empire

53

Asoka

Buddhism

king of India who converted to and spread

Buddhism

54

St. Augustine

Christianity

Early Christian theologian

55

William Harvey

Anglican (nominal) *

discovered the circulation of the blood

56

Ernest Rutherford

??

physicist; pioneer of subatomic physics

57

John Calvin

Protestant; Calvinism

Protestant reformer; founder of Calvinism

58

Gregor Mendel

Catholic (monk)

Mendelian genetics

59

Max Planck

Protestant *

physicist; thermodynamics

60

Joseph Lister

Quaker

principal discoverer of antiseptics which

greatly reduced surgical mortality

61

Nikolaus August

Otto

??

built first four-stroke internal combustion

engine

62

Francisco Pizarro

Catholic

Spanish conqueror in South America;

defeated Incas

63

Hernando Cortes

Catholic

conquered Mexico for Spain

64

Thomas Jefferson

Episcopalian; Deist; Unitarian *

3rd president of United States

65

Queen Isabella I

Catholic

Spanish ruler

66

Joseph Stalin

Russian Orthodox; Atheist; Marxism

revolutionary and ruler of USSR

67

Julius Caesar

Roman state paganism

Roman emperor

68

William the

Conqueror

Catholic

laid foundation of modern England

69

Sigmund Freud

Jewish (non-practicing); Atheist *

Freudian psychology/psychoanalysis

founder of Freudian school of psychology;

psychoanalysis

70

Edward Jenner

Christianity *

discoverer of the vaccination for smallpox

71

Wilhelm Conrad

Roentgen

??

discovered X-rays

72

Johann Sebastian

Bach

Lutheran; Catholic

composer

73

Lao Tzu

Taoism

founder of Taoism

74

Voltaire

raised in Jansenism;

later Deist *

writer and philosopher; wrote Candide

75

Johannes Kepler

Lutheran *

astronomer; planetary motions

76

Enrico Fermi

Catholic *

initiated the atomic age; father of atom

bomb

77

Leonhard Euler

Calvinist

physicist; mathematician; differential and

integral calculus and algebra

78

Jean-Jacques

Rousseau

born Protestant;

converted as a teen to Catholic;

later Deist

French deistic philosopher and author

79

Nicoli Machiavelli

Catholic

wrote The Prince (influential political

treatise)

80

Thomas Malthus

Anglican (cleric)

economist; wrote Essay on the Principle of

Population

81

John F. Kennedy

Catholic

president of United States

82

Gregory Pincus

Jewish *

endocrinologist; developed birth-control pill

83

Mani

Manicheanism

founder of Manicheanism, once a world

religion which rivaled Christianity in

strength

84

Lenin

Jewish (1/4); Russian Orthodox;

Atheist; Marxism/Communism

Russian ruler

85

Sui Wen Ti

Chinese traditional religion

unified China

86

Vasco da Gama

Catholic

navigator; discovered route from Europe to

India around Cape Hood

87

Cyrus the Great

Zoroastrianism

founder of Persian empire

88

Peter the Great

Russian Orthodox

forged Russia into a great European nation

89

Mao Zedong

Atheist; Communism; Maoism

founder of Maoism, Chinese form of

Communism

90

Francis Bacon

Anglican *

philosopher; delineated inductive scientific

method

[Caitanyachandra 0]

ADD to the list or create your own list...

 

I'll put a concocted one:

 

1. Sri Krsna

1. Sri Adi Sankar Acarya.

2. Jeev Goswami.

3. Jesus Christ (non-existent)

4. Darwin

5. Clinton

6. etc...

[Caitanyachandra 0]

Einstein would be in bottom fifty. His influence is completely taken out LI.

 

Thank relative time for that.

 

 

[Caitanyachandra 0]

Interesting study list for scholars.

[Caitanyachandra 0]

Leonhard Euler

Calvinist

physicist; mathematician; differential and

integral calculus and algebra

 

where does this guy get 'his history?

 

what a l00ser.

[Tarun 6]

John the Baptist, RAmanujAcarya, Tesla, Lord Chaitanya MahAprabhu, MadhvAcarya, Noah, Henry Ford, Ben Franklin, Babe Ruth, Louis Armstrong, Beethoven, Mozart, Gandhi, St. Francis of Assisi, Charley Chaplin, Rockefeller, Carnegie.

If it wasn't for Noah, we'd all be aquatics. Eternally.

Only 2 choices then: fresh or salty.

[stonehearted 0]

This list reminds me of a book out in the late '70. It described the 100 most famous (most widely known) personalities in the world. Mohammed came in at #1, Mickey Mouse at #2.

[Caitanyachandra 0]

interesting the list from 00's was accurate.

[Gauracandra 1]

I was just reviewing this list again. What is interesting is almost all the members it seemed to me were of European descent (and Christian usually). Is the list culturally biased? Certainly every so often you have a Mohammed or Buddha, but that is rather rare. I'm thinking it probably isn't (biased). Western society for all of its problems has also contributed alot positively to the world. Though this list isn't about positive contributions, just influencing the world

 

Gauracandra

[Tarun 6]

Mother YazodA is most famous of all, as her name suggests.

[Caitanyachandra 0]

"I was just reviewing this list again. What is interesting is almost all the members it

seemed to me were of European descent (and Christian usually)."

 

Yes, Mohammed a fake personality that nvr existed is put as #1 as a distraction!

 

[This message has been edited by Caitanyachandra (edited 10-03-2001).]

[Caitanyachandra 0]

Issaiah Newton is put at #2 for things he nvr invented but stole from Arabic<-Indian researchers.

 

Jesus is put at #3 for inventing the entire Judeo-Christian government technocritical system.

[alfa1 0]

All of us will be #1, when we will have the Knowledge.

[mahak 0]

Bogus list. No Malcolm X? No Didymous Thomas? No St. Augustine? No Jeanne d'Arc?

 

Islam gets too much recognition. Muhammed is properly listed, but Suliman is just as influential, and would have conquered the entire world if not for the black plague. What about the Huns? What about Chief Joseph? What about Kamehameha the Great?

 

Bogus list.

 

mad mahax

[Caitanyachandra 0]

His vision of "A PC on every desk, in every home"

 

Not his. A Indian's.

 

Joan of Arc for France.

Ravana, Hiranyaksipu, Sisupala, Kamsa, Jarasandha

 

of History referrign to modern history.

 

No Malcolm X?

...Self answering for Madmax

[Guest guest]

 

What about Ravana, Hiranyaksipu, Sisupala, Kamsa, Jarasandha, and many others that were for certain much more competent than Hitler?

 

What is the place of Lord Sandwich who was invented the MacDonalds’ specialty?

 

That’s indeed a very biased list of celebrities !

 

[shvu 1]

 

Lord Sandwich? cool....

I did not know sandwich was the name of a person.

 

Presently, im opinion, Bill gates is the person who has influenced the world, the most. His vision of "A PC on every desk, in every home" is fast approaching reality. It is not possible in all countries, of course, but these days, PC's are to be seen everywhere.

 

Cheers

 

[Gauracandra 1]

My own view of Bill Gates is that he was just lucky. I'm not saying he isn't intelligent or that he didn't work hard, but he was no visionary. He hit the right curve at the right time, and rode it to the top. There are quotes from him that are painfully embarassing in which he discusses the need for computers. In one he says something like "I don't see why anyone would ever need more than 64K of memory". Something like that. He also totally missed the internet coming. Where was his browser? He was completely behind on that. Now that he is big enough, he just buys new ideas after he falls behind.

 

He got lucky. No one saw the PC boom coming. Sure Bill Gates speaks of it today (now that it is already here and obvious). The best thing that happened to him was Steve Job's keeping the Apple operating system (a far superior computer) exclusive. Meanwhile all the knock offs of IBM computers came out, and because they couldn't put Steve Job's operating system on, just went with the inferior DOS. So all the software makers made most of the software for IBM computers and their knock-offs.

 

I don't think Bill Gates is a visionary. Sure he is rich, but a lot of people are in the right place at the right time. At one point, early on he considered selling his company for a few million to H. Ross Perot (the nutcase presidential candidate from Texas). If Perot had offered a little more he would have sold out. Just my thinking.

 

Gauracandra

[Guest guest]

I could notice Vasco da Gama, who merely made an oceanic trip to India. And what about the astronauts who supposedly went to the moon?

 

Is that list enhancing the thesis of the 'moon-landing hoax'?

 

[Guest guest]

 

Shvuji: Lord Sandwich? cool....

I did not know sandwich was the name of a person.

 

Satyaraj: For certain you couldn’t as you are a rascal atheist! This is another episode of a hidden avatara!

 

As you should known one of the main aspects of the Vedic culture is to eat with hands. Therefore Lord Sandwich has came to West to introduce Vedic precepts in this area. Only a very few occultists are aware of that avatara!

 

[amanpeter 0]

Originally posted by Satyaraja dasa:

Shvuji: Lord Sandwich? cool....

I did not know sandwich was the name of a person.

 

Satyaraj: For certain you couldn?t as you are a rascal atheist! This is another episode of a hidden avatara!

 

As you should known one of the main aspects of the Vedic culture is to eat with hands. Therefore Lord Sandwich has came to West to introduce Vedic precepts in this area. Only a very few occultists are aware of that avatara!

 

LOL! Glad to see your funny bone is still intact, Satyaraja prabhu!

 

 

[Caitanyachandra 0]

i'll throw my two cents in for aurobindo..

 

Sri Aurobindo was born in Calcutta on August 15, 1872. In 1879, at the age of seven, he was taken with his two elder brothers to England for education and lived there for fourteen years. Brought up at first in an English family at Manchester, he joined St. Paul's School in London in 1884 and in 1890 went from it with a senior classical scholarship to King's College, Cambridge, where he studied for two years. In 1890 he passed also the open competition for the Indian Civil Service, but at the end of two years of probation failed to present himself at the riding examination and was disqualified for the Service. At this time the Gaekwar of Baroda was in London. Aurobindo saw him, obtained an appointment in the Baroda Service and left England in January, 1893.

 

Sri Aurobindo passed thirteen years, from 1893 to 1906, in the Baroda Service, first in the Revenue Department and in secretariat work for the Maharaja, afterwards as Professor of English and, finally, Vice-Principal in the Baroda College. These were years of self-culture, of literary activity-for much of the poetry afterwards published from Pondicherry was written at this time-and of preparation for his future work. In England he had received, according to his father's express instructions, an entirely occidental education without any contact with the culture of India and the East.

 

At Baroda he made up the deficiency, learned Sanskrit and several modern Indian languages, assimilated the spirit of Indian civilisation and its forms past and present. A great part of the last years of this period was spent on leave in silent political activity, for he was debarred from public action by his position at Baroda. The outbreak of the agitation against the partition of Bengal in 1905 gave him the opportunity to give up the Baroda Service and join openly in the political movement. He left Baroda in 1906 and went to Calcutta as Principal of the newly-founded Bengal National College.

 

The political action of Sri Aurobindo covered eight years, from 1902 to 1910. During the first half of this period he worked behind the scenes, preparing with other co-workers the beginnings of the Swadeshi (Indian Sinn Fein) movement, till the agitation in Bengal furnished an opening for the public initiation of a more forward and direct political action than the moderate reformism which had till then been the creed of the Indian National Congress. ln 1906 Sri Aurobindo came to Bengal with this purpose and joined the New Party, an advanced section small in numbers and not yet strong in influence, which had been recently formed in the Congress. The political theory of this party was a rather vague gospel of Non-cooperation; in action it had not yet gone farther than some ineffective clashes with the Moderate leaders at the annual Congress assembly behind the veil of secrecy of the “Subjects Committee”. Sri Aurobindo persuaded its chiefs in Bengal to come forward publicly as an All-India party with a definite and challenging programme, putting forward Tilak, the popular Maratha leader at its head, and to attack the then dominant Moderate (Reformist or Liberal) oligarchy of veteran politicians and capture from them the Congress and the country. This was the origin of the historic struggle between the Moderates and the Nationalists (called by their opponents Extremists) which in two years changed altogether the face of Indian politics.

 

The new-born Nationalist party put forward Swaraj (independence) as its goal as against the far-off Moderate hope of colonial self-government to be realised at a distant date of a century or two by a slow progress of reform; it proposed as its means of execution a programme which resembled in spirit, though not in its details, the policy of Sinn Fein developed some years later and carried to a successful issue in Ireland. The principle of this new policy was self-help; it aimed on one side at an effective organisation of the forces of the nation and on the other professed a complete non-cooperation with the Government. Boycott of British and foreign goods and the fostering of Swadeshi industries to replace them, boycott of British law courts and the foundation of a system of Arbitration courts in their stead, boycott of Government universities and colleges and the creation of a network of National colleges and schools, the formation of societies of young men which would do the work of police and defense and, wherever necessary, a policy of passive resistance were among the immediate items of the programme. Sri Aurobindo hoped to capture the Congress and make it the directing centre of an organised national action, an informal State within the State, which would carry on the struggle for freedom till it was won. He persuaded the party to take up and finance as its recognised organ the newly-founded daily paper, Bande Mataram, of which he was at the time acting editor. The Bande Mataram, whose policy from the beginning of 1907 till its abrupt winding up in 1908 when Aurobindo was in prison was wholly directed by him, circulated almost immediately all over India. During its brief but momentous existence it changed the political thought of India which has ever since preserved fundamentally, even amidst its later developments, the stamp then imparted to it. But the struggle initiated on these lines, though vehement and eventful and full of importance for the future, did not last long at the time; for the country was still unripe for so bold a programme.

 

Sri Aurobindo was prosecuted for sedition in 1907 and acquitted. Up till now an organiser and writer, he was obliged by this event and by the imprisonment or disappearance of other leaders to come forward as the acknowledged head of the party in Bengal and to appear on the platform for the first time as a speaker. He presided over the Nationalist Conference at Surat in 1907 where in the forceful clash of two equal parties the Congress was broken to pieces. In May, 1908, he was arrested in the Alipur Conspiracy Case as implicated in the doings of the revolutionary group led by his brother Barindra; but no evidence of any value could be established against him and in this case too he was acquitted. After a detention of one year as undertrial prisoner in the Alipur Jail, he came out in May, 1909, to find the party organisation broken, its leaders scattered by imprisonment, deportation or self-imposed exile and the party itself still existent but dumb and dispirited and incapable of any strenuous action. For almost a year he strove single-handed as the sole remaining leader of the Nationalists in India to revive the movement. He published at this time to aid his effort a weekly English paper, the Karmayogin, and a Bengali weekly, the Dharma. But at last he was compelled to recognise that the nation was not yet sufficiently trained to carry out his policy and programme. For a time he thought that the necessary training must first be given through a less advanced Home Rule movement or an agitation of passive resistance of the kind created by Mahatma Gandhi in South Africa. But he saw that the hour of these movements had not come and that he himself was not their destined leader. Moreover, since his twelve months' detention in the Alipur Jail, which had been spent entirely in the practice of Yoga, his inner spiritual life was pressing upon him for an exclusive concentration. He resolved therefore to withdraw from the political field, at least for a time.

 

In February, 1910, he withdrew to a secret retirement at Chandernagore and in the beginning of April sailed for Pondicherry in French India. A third prosecution was launched against him at this moment for a signed article in the Karmayogin; in his absence it was pressed against the printer of the paper who was convicted, but the conviction was quashed on appeal in the High Court of Calcutta. For the third time a prosecution against him had failed. Sri Aurobindo had left Bengal with some intention of returning to the political field under more favourable circumstances; but very soon the magnitude of the spiritual work he had taken up appeared to him and he saw that it would need the exclusive concentration of all his energies. Eventually he cut off connection with politics, refused repeatedly to accept the Presidentship of the National Congress and went into a complete retirement. During all his stay at Pondicherry from 1910 to the present moment he has remained more and more exclusively devoted to his spiritual work and his sadhana. In 1914 after four years of silent Yoga he began the publication of a philosophical monthly, the Arya. Most of his more important works, those published since in book form, the Isha Upanishad, the Essays on the Gita, and others not yet published, The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga appeared serially in the Arya. These works embodied much of the inner knowledge that had come to him in his practice of Yoga. Others were concerned with the spirit and significance of Indian civilisation and culture, the true meaning of the Vedas, the progress of human society, the nature and evolution of poetry, the possibility of the unification of the human race. At this time also he began to publish his poems, both those written in England and at Baroda and those, fewer in number, added during his period of political activity and in the first years of his residence at Pondicherry. The Arya ceased publication in 1921 after six years and a half of uninterrupted appearance.

 

Sri Aurobindo lived at first in retirement at Pondicherry with four or five disciples. Afterwards more and yet more began to come to him to follow his spiritual path and the number became so large that a community of sadhakas had to be formed for the maintenance and collective guidance of those who had left everything behind for the sake of a higher life. This was the foundation of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram which has less been created than grown around him as its centre. Sri Aurobindo began his practice of Yoga in 1905. At first gathering into it the essential elements of spiritual experience that are gained by the paths of divine communion and spiritual realisation followed till now in India, he passed on in search of a more complete experience uniting and harmonising the two ends of existence, Spirit and Matter. Most ways of Yoga are paths to the Beyond leading to the Spirit and, in the end, away from life; Sri Aurobindo's rises to the Spirit to redescend with its gains bringing the light and power and bliss of the Spirit into life to transform it. Man's present existence in the material world is in this view or vision of things a life in the Ignorance with the Inconscient at its base, but even in its darkness and nescience there are involved the presence and possibilities of the Divine. The created world is not a mistake or a vanity and illusion to be cast aside by the soul returning to heaven or Nirvana, but the scene of a spiritual evolution by which out of this material Inconscience is to be manifested progressively the Divine Consciousness in things. Mind is the highest term yet reached in the evolution, but it is not the highest of which it is capable. There is above it a Supermind or eternal Truth-consciousness which is in its nature the self-aware and self-determining light and power of a Divine Knowledge. Mind is an ignorance seeking after Truth, but this is a self-existent Knowledge harmoniously manifesting the play of its forms and forces. It is only by the descent of this supermind that the perfection dreamed of by all that is highest in humanity can come. It is possible by opening to a greater divine consciousness to rise to this power of light and bliss, discover one's true self, remain in constant union with the Divine and bring down the supramental Force for the transformation of mind and life and body. To realise this possibility has been the dynamic aim of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga.

 

[talasiga 0]

Originally posted by shvu:

Lord Sandwich? cool....

I did not know sandwich was the name of a person.

 

Yes,

see John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich:-

http://lycos.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0843428.html

 

 

[Caitanyachandra 0]

Sanderson Beck puts Mahatma Gandhi has 1/4 most influential people in history.

 

PUTTING HIM # UNO in his LIst.