mcpon

And the sacking of Constantinople, of course. That was huge, lol.

I read somewhere that the Battle of Salami was important because if the Athenians and others lost, classical Greek civilization's development might have been hampered significantly, lol.

I sincerely apologize for dropping in on you guys like this but here is my updated list on the most influential people in history. I apologize in any way if this rubs anybody the wrong way. The list is an attempt at diversity, so some of the more influential people might have been excluded due to the main field they influenced ran out of the number of entries. 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

Ah crap, I killed this thread.

Then, by that logic, Newton might not even make the list because of all of the "giants" whose shoulders he stood on.

Well, I downgraded Newton because most of the things that Newton discovered in Optics was already discovered by Arab scientists. Liebniz "invented" Calculus, independent of Newton, and came up with the notations. And most or all of his first two laws of motion had already been discovered by Arab scientists. Those are just what I've read, I don't really know. The basis for the rankings is based on how influential were the movements that these people were a part of and how big of a part did these people play in these movements, all subjective. And Jesus is 5th, not 7th.

No real basis, just what I felt. I just went around the internet, searching for "most influential (scientists, ideas, inventions, etc.)" lists and topics and see who they came up with. I made predictions, such as that Marxism will be kind of like Manichaeism - prominent on the world stage for a time but then fade away eventually, but Marxism on a larger scale, so I knocked him down. I'm not a historian, just a history major, so my knowledge is limited. I'm more interested in what other people have to offer. They may think, hmmm, mcpon put up some interesting names, maybe I will too.

Edit: I added this spiel to the op.

Informative and yeah, you're probably right.

I know you guys already have a most influential scientist & historical leader threads, so I apologize if this thread seems too similar to those. But after I read Michael Hart's list, I decided to come up with my own. I know that some of the entries are questionable. But who would you guys put on your list? Who do you think is the most influential people?? And, lastly, I tried the search and didn't find a thread exactly like this one, so sorry if this thread is just a repeat. # Mohammed # Jesus of Nazareth # Aristotle # Tsai Lun (credited with the invention of paper) # Johann Gutenberg # 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 # 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) # Albert Einstein # Henry Bessemer # Sui Wen Ti (reunified China) # Martin Luther # Umar ibn al-Khattab (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) # Sigmund Freud # Saint Augustine of Hippo # Charles Darwin # St. Thomas Aquinas # Alexander Graham Bell (telephone would have been invented anyways without him, but still beat Gray to it) # Nikolas August von Otto # 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)) # Galileo Galilei # Charlemagne # Queen Isabella & Ferdinand # Zayd ibn Thabit (prepared the "definitive" version of the Koran as commissioned (Sunni view)) # Karl Benz (built the first automobile) # William the Conqueror # 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) # Charles Babbage / Howard Aiken (Aiken's model was based on Babbage's design) # Wilbur & Orville Wright (Wright brothers) # Bardeen, Brattain, Shockley (invented the transistor) # Julius Caesar # Cyrus II (the Great) # Menes (started the dynastic tradition of Egypt) # George Washington # Saints Clement of Ohrid, Cyrill, and Methodius (for their contributions in the development of the Cyrillic alphabet) # William Shakespeare # Jack Kilby / Robert Noyce (for inventing the silicon chip) # John Locke # Sir Alexander Fleming # Francisco Pizarro # Muawiya I (of the Umayyad dynasty) # Michael Faraday (eletric motor, etc.) # Adi Sankara (revived Hinduism after Buddhism and Jainism were starting to take over Southeast Asia) # Vladimir Lenin # Simon Bolivar # Maharshi Veda Vyasa (credited with the Mahabharata and the Bhagavad Gita) # Mencius # Richard Arkwright # Mao Zedong # Ibn Firnas / Salvino D'Armati / Alessandro Spina (supposed inventors of reading stones and eyeglasses, respectively; Spina made it known) # Madhavira # Nagarjuna # John Calvin # Leo Baekeland (invented the first "real" plastic) # Mani # Edward Jenner / Lady Montagu # Louis Daguerre / Joseph Niepce (would have happened anyways, but still beat Fox Talbot to it) # Adam Smith # Alessandro Volta # Han Wu Ti ("martial emperor" not the other one) # Johann Karl Frederich Gauss # Homer (wrote Greece's national epic poems) # Carl von Linde (for his contribution to the field of refrigeration) # Queen Elizabeth I # Sulieman the Great # Vinton Cerf (often regarded as the "father of the Internet") # Ibn al-Haytham (arguably, the "first real modern scientist") # Zhu Xi # Tribonian (codified Roman Law, under Justinian I) # James Watson, Francis Crick, Rosalind Franklin # Ferdowsi I tried to lower the percentage of Europeans / Americans on the list than was on Hart's list. His had around 80 percent. I got it down to around 70 percent. And I also tried to emphasize people that influenced the late 20th century technologically (which made me end up with more Americans than I wanted) since Hart's list came out in the 1970's. And I also tried to balance out people before the modern age (Middle Ages & before) with those of the modern age. I'm biased against the arts because I don't know much about it and don't know how certain artists influenced later art. And besides, all lists like these are arbitrary and biased, even Hart's. How can it not be?

I voted for Shi Huang Ti because he was the first to unify China (although Sui Wen Ti would reunify it because Huang Ti had such incompetent successors) and standardized the language (among other things) that would last for such a long time. And he built the great wall. Second, I would put Constantine. He gave the church such power, elongated the longevity of the Roman empire (in the east), and established the feudal system (so people couldn't move up on the economic ladder).