أعظم 100 شخصية

1

Muhammad

Islam

Prophet of Islam;  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

United Brethren

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
a.k.a. "William Shakespeare"

Christianity

literature; also wrote 6 volumes about philosophy and religion

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

born into but later rejected Catholicism; allegedly a proponent of Germanic Neo-Paganism; Nazism

conqueror; led Axis Powers in WWII<!-- ; <b>killed 6 million Jews</b> -->

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; architect

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)

described the circulation of blood; wrote Essays on the Generation of Animals, the basis for modern embryology

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; through war and introduction of new diseases he largely destroyed Aztec civilization

64

Thomas Jefferson

Episcopalian; Deist

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

Russian Orthodox;
Atheist; Marxism/Communism [more]

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

91

Henry Ford

Protestant

developed automobile; achievement in manufacturing and assembly

92

Mencius

Confucianism

philosopher; founder of a school of Confucianism

93

Zoroaster

Zoroastrianism

founder of Zoroastrianism

94

Queen Elizabeth I

Anglican

British monarch; restored Church of England to power after Queen Mary

95

Mikhail Gorbachev

Russian Orthodox

Russian premier who helped end Communism in USSR

96

Menes

Egyptian paganism

unified Upper and Lower Egypt

97

Charlemagne

Catholic

Holy Roman Empire created with his baptism in 800 AD

98

Homer

Greek paganism

epic poet

99

Justinian I

Catholic

Roman emperor; reconquered Mediterranean empire; accelerated Catholic-Monophysite schism

100

Mahavira

Hinduism; Jainism

founder of Jainism

RU

St. Thomas Aquinas

Catholic

influential early Christian philosopher

RU

Archimedes

Greek philosophy

father of experimental science

RU

Charles Babbage

??

mathematician and inventor of forerunner of computer

RU

Cheops

Egyptian paganism

Egyptian ruler; builder of Great Pyramid

RU

Marie Curie

Catholic; nonreligious

physicist; radioactivity

RU

Benjamin Franklin

Presbyterian; Deist

American politician and inventor

RU

Mohandas Gandhi

Hinduism; influenced by Jainism (mother was a Jain)

Indian leader and Hindu religious reformer

RU

Abraham Lincoln

Regular Baptist (childhood);
later ambiguous -
Deist, general theist or
a very personalized Christianity

16th president of U.S.; led during Civil War

RU

Ferdinand Magellan

Catholic

navigator; named Pacific Ocean; first circumnavigation of globe

RU

Leonardo da Vinci

Catholic

artist; inventor