100 Most Influential (just my opinion)

I apologize if this list rubs people the wrong way. I don't mean, at all, to purport that this is some definitive list, at all. This list was compiled with no rhyme nor reason and is just purely based on my biased opinion, lol. But here it is, my list of the most influential people in history:

Wanna talk about it? :smile:

1. "Mitochondrial Eve"
2. Otto von Guericke
3. Cyrus II
4. Johannes Gutenberg
5. Muhammed
6. James Watt
7. Christopher Columbus
8. Carl Bosch
9. Isaac Newton
10. Genghis Khan
11. Aristotle
12. Homer
13. "ancestor of all that has natural blue eyes"
14. Louis Pasteur
15. William Paterson
16. Charles Darwin
17. Malcolm McLean
18. Mehmed II
19. James Clerk Maxwell
20. Tiglath-Pileser III
21. Abbes Sieyes
22. Alhacen
23. Li Si
24. Euclid
25. Julius Caesar
26. Claude Shannon
27. Edward Coke
28. Justinian I
29. Maharshi Veda Vyasa
30. Karl Marx
31. Brahmagupta
32. Alexander Fleming
33. Cai Lun
34. Martin Luther
35. Francis Russell (Duke of Bedford)
36. Menes/Narmer
37. Napoleon Bonaparte
38. Alyattes/Alyattes II
39. Johann van Oldenbarnevelt
40. John Snow
41. Thespis
42. Abu Bakr
43. Luca Pacioli
44. Edwin Drake
45. Gavrilo Princep
46. Marquess of Shen
47. Thomas Edison
48. David Ogilvy
49. Sundiata Keita
50. Harun al-Rashid
51. Adam Smith
52. John Montagu (Earl of Sandwich)
53. Richard Arkwright
54. Robert Peel
55. Ebenezer Cobb Morley
56. Parameswara
57. Peter Peregrinus of Maricourt
58. John Locke
59. Norbert Weiner
60. Charles Frederick Worth
61. Nicolas Appert
62. Friedrich Wohler
63. Elvis Presley
64. Dhabhani
65. George Cayley
66. Cesare Beccaria
67. Simon Stevin
68. John Smeaton
69. Pericles
70. Boulanger
71. Sumu-Abum
72. Gratian
73. Henry Bessemer
74. Vasili Arkhipov
75. Carl Wilhelm Scheele
76. Russell Marker
77. Saints Cyril and Methodius
78. Zhong Yao
79. Wilhelm von Humboldt
80. Otto Hahn/Lise Meitner
81. Thomas Cook
82. William Cullen
83. Hugh Capet
84. Norman Borlaug
85. Henrietta Lacks
86. Charles Henry Brent
87. Otto von Bismarck
88. Sanford Fleming
89. James Bonsack
90. William Shockley, Walter Brittain, John Bardeen
91. Henry Ford
92. Hennig Brandt
93. Charles Gordon Greene
94. Henry Luce
95. Charles Augustus Fey
96. James Ritty
97. Rachel Carson
98. Elizabeth Arden
99. Professor Ludovico Brunetti
100. Matthew Prior

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Reply 1

Captain Jack

Cool list @mcpon14 I always wonder with history, who is the most influential vs who is the most famous.

Reply 2

Wired_1800

Original post by mcpon14

Good that this is a subjective list.

13. "ancestor of all that has natural blue eyes"

This person has no name but is among your list.

No mention of the Great Pharaohs of Egypt that arguably ruled the largest and greatest empire on Earth.

No mention of other great thinkers like Confucius.

No mention of Ghandi or other greats who fought for the freedom of their people.

It is a good thing that you agree that you are biased.

Reply 3

mcpon14

Original post by Wired_1800

Well, as for great pharoahs, I have on there the one that started the dynastic tradition of Egypt -- Menes/Narmer, lol. :smile:

As for great thinkers, I have Marx, Locke, Aristotle, Smith, Beccaria, etc. :smile:

As for great thinkers of China, I have Marquess of Shen, who was the foremost figure in causing the emergence of the Hundred Schools of Thought that led to the creation of all of the major schools of thought descended from Chinese history including Daoism and Confucianism and Legalism, etc., besides the minor ones. :smile:

As for the revolutionaries, I have Napoleon and Abbes Sieyes, whose French Revolution influenced all other subsequent revolutions. And Napoleon was largely responsible for the success of the wars of independence of the Latin American (except Brazil) and Central American countries because he tied up Spain's military and resources when Spain fought in the Napoleonic Wars.

"Mitochondrial Eve" has no name either. And if something big like being the ancestor of all who have natural blue eyes can be traced to one individual, then he or she can be included because it is definitive that he or she is a singular figure, and it doesn't matter that he or she doesn't have a name. :smile:

(edited 6 years ago)

Reply 4

mcpon14

Original post by Onde

Whoisbigger.com has the top 100 as:
Jesus
Napoleon
Muhammad
William Shakespeare
Abraham Lincoln
George Washington
Adolf Hitler
Aristotle
Alexander the Great
Thomas Jefferson
Henry VIII of England
Charles Darwin
Elizabeth I of England
Karl Marx
Julius Caesar
Queen Victoria
Martin Luther
Joseph Stalin
Albert Einstein
Christopher Columbus
Isaac Newton
Charlemagne
Theodore Roosevelt
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Plato
Louis XIV of France
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ulysses S. Grant
Leonardo da Vinci
Augustus
Carl Linnaeus
Ronald Reagan
Charles Dickens
Paul the Apostle
Benjamin Franklin
George W. Bush
Winston Churchill
Genghis Khan
Charles I of England
Thomas Edison
James I of England
Friedrich Nietzsche
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Sigmund Freud
Alexander Hamilton
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
Woodrow Wilson
Johann Sebastian Bach
Galileo Galilei
Oliver Cromwell
James Madison
Gautama Buddha
Mark Twain
Edgar Allan Poe
Joseph Smith, Jr.
Adam Smith
David
George III of the United Kingdom
Immanuel Kant
James Cook
John Adams
Richard Wagner
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Voltaire
Saint Peter
Andrew Jackson
Constantine the Great
Socrates
Elvis Presley
William the Conqueror
John F. Kennedy
Augustine of Hippo
Vincent van Gogh
Nicolaus Copernicus
Vladimir Lenin
Robert E. Lee
Oscar Wilde
Charles II of England
Cicero
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Francis Bacon
Richard Nixon
Louis XVI of France
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor
King Arthur
Michelangelo
Philip II of Spain
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Ali
Thomas Aquinas
Pope John Paul II
René Descartes
Nikola Tesla
Harry S. Truman
Joan of Arc
Dante Alighieri
Otto von Bismarck
Grover Cleveland
John Calvin
John Locke

Michael Hart has a list. Pantheon has a list. Times has a list. But they always go with the famous people. I mean, how can you leave Fritz Haber/Carl Bosch out of it, or Claude Shannon, or Malcolm McLean, etc. They go with big names that did big things and forget the little names that did big things, lol. :smile:

Reply 5

username1544121

Put your mum and dad In there too, after all, they conceived you!

Reply 6

mcpon14

Original post by Dhanny

Put your mum and dad In there too, after all, they conceived you!

Lol, I ain't crap. :smile:

Reply 7

mcpon14

Original post by Onde

The whoisbigger.com rationale would be that individuals of known importance would be suitably well-attested by history. As far as I can see, they have the most objective methodology for attempting such a list.

It is a good rationale but they are missing some super influential people, to be honest. :smile:

Reply 8

Laissez‒faire

Jesus and Mohammed should easily be on the top.

Reply 9

mcpon14

Original post by Laissez‒faire

Jesus and Mohammed should easily be on the top.

Cyrus II allowing the Jews to go back to Jerusalem to rebuild their temple and helping to fund it began Second Temple Judaism. Christianity was just a sect of Second Temple Judaism and Islam borrowed a lot from Second Temple Judaism, tool. :smile:

Judaic exclusive monotheism came out of Second Temple Judaism and both Islam and Christianity was monotheisms that emerged out of Judaism. :smile:

Reply 10

Wired_1800

Original post by mcpon14

Well, as for great pharoahs, I have on there the one that started the dynastic tradition of Egypt -- Menes/Narmer, lol. :smile:

As for great thinkers, I have Marx, Locke, Aristotle, Smith, Beccaria, etc. :smile:

Fair enough.

What about the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, Warburgs and many other banking families that have ruled and influenced the world for many years.

(edited 6 years ago)

Reply 11

username1149696

Original post by mcpon14

It is a good rationale but they are missing some super influential people, to be honest. :smile:

sure. But I do like the fact that they were consistent in their approach, and essentially had an exhaustive list of everybody of note.

Reply 12

mcpon14

Original post by Onde

sure. But I do like the fact that they were consistent in their approach, and essentially had an exhaustive list of everybody of note.

How come they didn't have Fritz Haber or Carl Bosch, of the Haber-Bosch process, which was played a large role in why the population skyrocketed in the 20th century and beyond, from around 1 billion in the 1900s to 7 billion of recent times? :smile:

Or William Shockley, Walter Brittain or John Bardeen who invented the transistor, which is used in all subsequent electronics, and which is the basic component of the microchip?

Reply 13

mcpon14

Original post by Wired_1800

Fair enough.

What about the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, Warburgs and many other banking families that have ruled and influenced the world for many years.

Well, for me, many banking innovations had to happen before banking dynasties and huge corporations that make money off of those innovations had to happen and I included those such as Luca Pacioli (double-entry bookkeeping and other accounting things), Alyattes/Alyattes II (invented true coins (standardized weight and state guarantee that it can be used as payment)), Genghis Khan (during the Pax Mongolica, things like deposit banking, insurance and bills of exchange were spread to Europe), etc.

Think about it: How can Hollywood happen if the motion picture camera wasn't invented or the recording industry, if machines that could record sound and reproduce sound wasn't invented?

Reply 14

mcpon14

Original post by Captain Jack

Cool list @mcpon14 I always wonder with history, who is the most influential vs who is the most famous.

Thanks

Reply 15

mcpon14

Original post by Onde

Fritz Haber is ranked 3628, Carl Bosch 18870, William Shockley 6872, Walter Brittain 27647, and John Bardeen 7599. I guess it is a combination of them not being recognised by history compared to similar innovators, and maybe because their achievement was a team/company effort. Thomas Edison for example may not have invented the lightbulb, but he is generally the one who gets the credit for making it a big thing.

Shockley, yes, because it was Bell Labs but Shockley led the team and Shockley, Brittain, Bardeen got the Nobel Prize for the transistor. But Martin Cooper gets credit for inventing the first mobile phone but it was a team effort, Motorola, I think, lol.

Fritz Haber's part wasn't a team effort, unless you count Clara Immerwahr's contributions but hers was uncredited, lol. And Edison was definitely a team effort, so much so that his most important contribution to humanity, some would say, lol, is that he popularized large scale teamwork to inventing. That's why I didn't put him higher because, for example, all of the things he invented in the movie camera area were invented by his employees or others, and he mass-marketed it, lol. And a lot of inventions that are credited to people are so only because they got the patent for it, lol, for example, he got in a patent dispute with Hiram Maxim for the patent for the light bulb, which was probably basically the same as Edison's, both long-lasting and safe. Bell with Elisha Root and the Wright brothers where there are some who claim that others should have been given priority of inventing the airplane. And James Watt and Matthew Boulton stifled the progression of the steam engine because their patent prevented others from improving upon it. McKay sort of got the combine harvester to be seen as his invention when he actually got the idea from a literature from California and Moore invented it in the United States. All I'm saying is that just because you are a big name associated with something, doesn't always mean that you deserve as much credit as you are getting, and that there are many unrecognized people who deserve recognition.
And if you are talking about a team effort, then what about generals and conquerors? All of them achieved what they achieved because of their army. :smile:

And all innovations and influential ideas are team efforts because as Newton said, "they stand on the shoulders of giants", lol. :smile:

(edited 6 years ago)

Reply 16

Jjj90

Its a completely impossible thing to quantify. Who's to say Michael Jordan and Elvis Presley haven't inspired as many people as any politician or soldier?

Reply 17

mcpon14

Original post by Jjj90

Its a completely impossible thing to quantify. Who's to say Michael Jordan and Elvis Presley haven't inspired as many people as any politician or soldier?