Leo Szilard. He was the man who convinced Einstein to write the letter to FDR that started the Manhattan Project. Not that I think he's the most influential man in history, but he's one of the guys to look at in connection with nuclear weapons. Also Charles Thomson Rees Wilson, the meteorologist. He was interested in studying rainbows and, in particular, "glories" made when light passes through certain clouds. So he set out to make a machine that made clouds, but no one knew how clouds formed then. His device, based on his own incorrect theory of cloud formation, bombarded a supersaturated, sealed chamber with X-Rays, which did form wispy little clouds. Ernest Rutherford realized the chamber was providing useful information about atomic level events and used it to track subatomic particles. Thereafter, the cloud chamber became an important tool for probing atomic structure, without which we would not have developed a sufficiently accurate model of the atom to develop nuclear weapons. So I blame Charles Wilson. Or maybe meteorology. Or rainbows. Me personally, I'd probably say Julius Caesar was the most influential (though his influence arose as much through what people feared he would do, as by what he did). Without Caesar, the Roman Republic might not have fallen. Without the Roman Empire, Christianity might have died out, and the face of Europe, the Near east and North Africa certainly would have been changed substantially.
The most influential person in history is dead. The most influential person today is me. I'm not finding any of you more compelling. The Universe hasn't seen fit to tell me otherwise.
The person with the most immediate impact would be Mao. He didn't just nudge society here and there but changed the actual daily life of a billion people. In a longer historical perspective? Hmmm? I'm inclined to go with someone who had an impact puting the world onto the road to technological modernity. An individual like Gutenberg and the printing press...or Martin Luther or Galileo as puting cracks in the oppressive ignorance of the Catholic church. One can't go wrong recommending a Marx or Darwin or Einstein but I see their way as having been cleared by revolutionary thinkers from a few centuries previous. Like most history, it's difficult to isolate an event or indivudual and not examine what event or individual predicated that choice. Is there an Einstein without a Newton? A Newton without a Galileo? Any of them without an Aristotle? A Newton without a Julius Caesar to spread Graeco-Roman culture to northern Europe?
non exhaustive list of important people There are at least 10 very important people: 1 and 2 : The two yet unborn and unknown future inventors of the warp propulsion 3: Jesus, the carpenter and dissident rabbi originating from Nazareth 4: Mohammad the merchant and dissident rabbi originating from Mecca 5: Albert Einstein 6: Stephen Hawking 7: Voltaire 8: President Roosevelt whose army saved Europe from fascism 9: Michael Gorbatchov 10: Vladimir Illitch Uljanov, better known under his code name "Lenine"
I doubt that. (The part about it being "for the last time.")Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
The guy who conceptualised god for the propaganda tool it has become today. Amazing and ingenius. Not that I belive in him god you.
I apologyze Oh, as a woman, I apologize for not having named a single sister in my list. So i would like to add 4 of them: Johanna (or Mary?) from Galilee, daughter of Zebedee and Salome. Unfortunately official history has faked her gender, and created the male character "John" instead ... Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Johanna of Orleans Cleopatra (could have had an important role in history if not dismissed and forced to suicide by a plot) Edith Roosevelt - First Lady of Theodore Roosevelt, she supported unconditionally his decision to enter WW2 against fascism
Nice list Zira!! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I wanna add Joan of Arc and Boudica.