Those unique or creative people whose singular contributions, most influenced the world they lived in, then and now.
1. Johannes Gutenberg - invented the printing press and thus, in effect, started the whole information revolution that we are living in today.
2. Isaac Newton - founder of modern science, math and physics. He discovered the law of gravity, law of optics, law of motion and invented calculus.
3. Martin Luther - led the Protestant wing from the Catholic church and shifted the emphasis of religious worship to the individual, with the concept that man can relate directly to God.
4. Charles Darwin - with his "Origin of the Species" introduced the theory of evolution which brought to bear such concepts as natural selection, the survival of the fittest and the evolution of species.
5. William Shakespeare - works set models and prototypes of the human being and the way we think and provided an integration of language with plot, character and psychology that writers today still follow.
6. Christopher Columbus - brought Europe to America and discovered the New World.
7. Karl Marx - fostered the rise of the working class with his "communist manifesto" which gave rise to communism.
8. Albert Einstein - theory of relativity and groundwork for the nuclear age.
9. Nicolaus Copernicus - first to re-think the universe as it was then known and inspired by Galileo, who proved his theories.
10. Galileo Galilee - created the science of modern astronomy and proved, despite the church which opposed him, that the planets do indeed circle the sun. For such blasphemy, he was put under house arrest for 9 years.
11. Leonardo da Vinci - painter, skeptic, scientist, aerodynamicist, who envisioned the world's 1st helicopter (a drawing on paper) and painted the magnificent Last Supper and Mona Lisa.
12. Sigmund Freud - father of psychoanalysis who gave us he concepts of the "id" the "ego" and the "Oedipus complex".
13. Thomas Edison - gave us electricity, motion pictures and the victrola (1,000 patents may have been the inventive brain of them all).
14. Thomas Jefferson - wrote the Declaration of Independence and stirred the world with his idea that "all men are created equal".
15. Adolf Hitler - a madman who got hold of a government and transformed his century.
16. Mahatma Gandhi - one of the World's greatest leaders, a martyred man of principle who gained freedom for India.
17. John Locke - laid the foundation for constitutional democracy.
18. Michael Angelo - gave the World the transcendant images of David, the Pieta, the Sistine Chapel in Florence.
19. Adam Smith - developed the theory of free trade among nations.
20. George Washington - who could have been a dictator but subordinated himself to the people to form a democracy.
21. Genghis Khan - created the largest empire in the world history (Mongol Kingdom).
22. Abraham Lincoln - kept America united despite the Civil War.
23. James Watt - invented the steam engine (replaced animals and men). Became the father of Industrial revolution.
24. St.Thomas Aquinas - promulgated the idea that reason and faith can co-exist (the world of men and world of God).
Source: Beth Day-Romulo
Source: Beth Day-Romulo
