Life Magazine top 100 People of the Millenium

From this:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Life-Millennium-Important-Events/dp/082122557X

I remember being fascinated by this list when it came out. it's obviously pointless (and euro/male-centric), but looking at it now i can't help but wonder how it should be re-ordered, and who was left off.

can't find the "official" list online, but this one seems accurate according to my memory.

1. THOMAS EDISON
2. CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS
3. MARTIN LUTHER
4. GALILEO GALILEI
5. LEONARDO DA VINCI
6. ISAAC NEWTON
7. FERDINAND MAGELLAN
8. LOUIS PASTEUR
9. CHARLES DARWIN
10. THOMAS JEFFERSON
11. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
12. NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
13. ADOLF HITLER
14. ZHENG HE
15. HENRY FORD
16. SIGMUND FREUD
17. RICHARD ARKWRIGHT
18. KARL MARX
19. NICOLAUS COPERNICUS
20. ORVILLE & WILBUR WRIGHT
21. ALBERT EINSTEIN
22. MOHANDAS GANDHI
23. KUBLAI KHAN
24. JAMES MADISON
25. SIMON BOLIVAR
26. MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT
27. GUGLIELMO MARCONI
28. MAO ZEDONG
29. VLADIMIR LENIN
30. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
31. ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL
32. RENE DESCARTES
33. LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
34. THOMAS AQUINAS
35. ABRAHAM LINCOLN
36. MICHELANGELO
37. VASCO DA GAMA
38. SULEYMAN THE MAGNIFICENT
39. SAMUEL F.B. MORSE
40. JOHN CALVIN
41. FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE
42. HERNAN CORTES
43. JOSEPH LISTER
44. IBN BATTUTA
45. ZHU XI
46. GREGOR MENDEL
47. JOHN LOCKE
48. AKBAR
49. MARCO POLO
50. DANTE ALIGHIERI
51. JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER
52. JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
53. NIELS BOHR
54. JOAN OF ARC
55. FREDERICK DOUGLASS
56. LOUIS XIV
57. NIKOLA TESLA
58. IMMANUEL KANT
59. FAN KUAN
60. OTTO VON BISMARCK
61. WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR
62. GUIDO OF AREZZ
63. JOHN HARRISON
64. POPE INNOCENT III
65. HIRAM MAXIM
66. JANE ADDAMS
67. CAO XUEQIN
68 MATTEO RICCI
69. LOUIS ARMSTRONG
70. MICHAEL FARADAY
71. IBN-SINA
72. SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
73. JALAL AD-DIN AR-RUMI
74. ADAM SMITH
75. MARIE CURIE
76. ANDREA PALLADIO
77. PETER THE GREAT
78. PABLO PICASSO
79. LOUIS JACQUES MANDE DAGUERRE
80. ANTOINE-LAURENT LAVOISIER
81. PHINEAS T. BARNUM
82. EDWIN HUBBLE
83. SUSAN B. ANTHONY
84. RAPHAEL
85. HELEN KELLER
86. HOKUSAI
87. THEODOR HERZL
88. ELIZABETH I
89 CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI
90. WALT DISNEY
91. NELSON MANDELA
92. ROGER BANNISTER
93. LEO TOLSTOY
94. JOHN VON NEUMANN
95. SANTIAGO RAMON Y CAJAL
96. JACQUES COUSTEAU
97. CATHERINE DE MEDICIS
98. IBN-KHALDUN
99. KWAME NKRUMAH
100. CAROLUS LINNAEUS

von Neumann over Gödel? madness

Fuckin cheek callin it eurocentric with that 1-2

haha i don't remember this list but i remember their list of 100 most important americans of the 20th century (from 1990! note no jobs or gates)(feel free to chime in 'they don't deserve a spot anyway'). glancing at it it's a better list than the millenium list. i remember they had the caveat that presidents as they were supposed to be important or whatever. anyhow here's that list:

NEW YORK (AP) - Here are the "100 Most Important Americans of the 20th Century" compiled by editors of Life Magazine and listed alphabetically:

Jane Addams (1860-1935) Social reformer

Muhammad Ali (1942- ) Prizefighter

Elizabeth Arden (1884?-1966) Businesswoman

Roone Arledge (1931- ) Broadcasting executive

Louis Armstrong (1900?-71) Jazz musician

George Balanchine (1904-83) Choreographer

John Bardeen (1908- ) Physicist

Irving Berlin (1888-1989) Songwriter

Edward L. Bernays (1891- ) Public Relations executive

Leonard Bernstein (1918- ) Conductor/composer

Marlon Brando (1924- ) Actor

Wernher von Braun (1912-77) Rocket engineer

Dale Carnegie (1888-1955) Author/educator

Wallace Carothers (1896-1937) Chemist/nylon inventor

Willis Carrier (1876-1950) Engineer/air conditioning inventor

Rachel Carson (1907-64) Environmentalist/author

Bing Crosby (1904-77) Singer/actor

Clarence Darrow (1857-1938) Lawyer

Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926) Labor organizer

Robert De Graff (1895?-1981) First paperback book publisher

John Dewey (1859-1952) Philosopher/educator

Walt Disney (1901-66) Cartoonist/film producer

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963) NAACP founder

Allen Dulles (1893-1969) Founding CIA director

Bob Dylan (1941- ) Singer/songwriter

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) Theoretical physicist

T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) Poet/critic

William Faulkner (1897-1962) Author

Abraham Flexner (1866-1959) Educator

Henry Ford (1863-1947) Automobile manufacturer

John Ford (1895-1973) Filmmaker

Betty Friedan (1921- ) Feminist author

Milton Friedman (1912- ) Economist

George Gallup (1901-84) Public opinion analyst

A.P. Giannini (1870-1949) Banker

Billy Graham (1918- ) Evangelist

Martha Graham (1894?- ) Dancer/choreographer

D.W. Griffith (1875-1948) Filmmaker

Joyce C. Hall (1891-1982) Businessman/greeting cards

Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961) Author

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935) Jurist

J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972) FBI director

Robert Hutchins (1899-1977) Educator

Helen Keller (1880-1968) Activist author/lecturer

Jack Kerouac (1922-69) Author

Billie Jean King (1943- ) Tennis player

Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-68) Civil rights activist

Alfred Kinsey (1894-1956) Sociologist/sex researcher

Willem Kolff (1911- ) Biomedical engineer

Ray Kroc (1902-84) McDonald's founder

Edwin Land (1909- ) Inventor, polarized lenses/camera

William Levitt (1907- ) Developer

John L. Lewis (1880-1969) Labor leader

Charles Lindbergh (1902-74) Aviator

Raymond Loewy (1893-1986) Industrial designer

Henry Luce (1898-1967) Editor/publisher

Douglas MacArthur (1889-1964) U.S. Army General

George C. Marshall (1880-1959) Soldier/diplomat

Louis B. Mayer (1885-1957) Motion picture producer

Claire McCardell (1905-58) Fashion designer

Joseph McCarthy (1908-57) U.S. Senator

Frank McNamara (1917-57) Inventor of the credit card

Margaret Mead (1901-78) Anthropologist

Karl Menninger (1893-1990) Psychiatrist

Charles E. Merrill (1885-1956) Stockbroker

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) Architect

Robert Moses (1888-1981) Municipal planner

William Mulholland (1855-1935) Civil engineer

Edward R. Murrow (1908-65) Journalist

Ralph Nader (1934- ) Consumer advocate

Rienhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) Theologian

John von Neumann (1903-57) Mathematician

Euguene O'Neill (1888-1953) Playwright

J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-67) Physicist

William Paley (1901- ) Broadcasting executive

Jackson Pollock (1912-56) Artist

Emily Post (1873-1960) Etiquette columnist

Elvis Presley (1935-77) Entertainer

Jackie Robinson (1919-72) Baseball player

John D. Rockefeller Jr. (1874-1960) Philanthropist

Richard Rodgers (1902-79) Composer

Will Rogers (1879-1935) Humorist author/actor

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) Political figure/

author

Babe Ruth (1895-1948) Baseball player

Jonas Salk (1914- ) Polio vaccine microbiologist

Margaret Sanger (1883-1966) Leader of birth-control movement

Alfred P. Sloan Jr. (1875-1966) Industrialist

Benjamin Spock (1903- ) Pediatrician/educator

Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) Photographer

Roy Stryker (1893-1975) Deptartment of Agriculture official

Bill W. (1895-1971) Alcoholics Anonymous founder

Andy Warhol (1928-87) Artist

Earl Warren (1891-1974) Supreme Court Chief Justice

James D. Watson (1928- ) Biologist/DNA researcher

Thomas J. Watson Jr. (1914- ) Businessman

Tennesee Williams (1911-83) Playwright

Walter Winchell (1897-1972) Journalist

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) Architect

Orville Wright (1871-1948) and Wilbur Wright (1867-1912) Aviation pioneers

Malcolm X (1925-65) Civil rights activist

haha I meant "euro" as code for "western" and "white"! Point taken tho.

(from 1990! note no jobs or gates)

no cash or hope either

Na i figured ryan. Bollocks to em ahead of newton or davinci or collins obv

Wait where the fuck is collins

fucking INSANE norman borlaug isn't on that list

xpost - god bless you clay

I kinda shrug at Columbus being that high. Like that Seinfeld bit, "it's not like they weren't gonna discover that anyway."

Newton seems a legit choice for #1 in a lot of respects. Not least his own weirdness.

Can't wait for the pseudo-geeks to vilify Edison and complain about Tesla's ranking.

i saw a list like this once that had gutenberg at no. 1, seems like a defensible choice to me.

i remember me and my friends looking at this book in the hs library all the time - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_100:_A_Ranking_of_the_Most_Influential_Persons_in_History

kinda curious about this!

Hart wrote another book in 1999, entitled A View from the Year 3000,[3] voiced in the perspective of a person from that future year and ranking the most influential people in history. Roughly half of those entries are fictional people from 2000–3000, but the remainder are actual people. These were taken mostly from the 1992 edition, with some re-ranking of order.

no stalin wtf?

Kublai but not Genghis?

they prob figured having lenin in there made stalin redundant. you could make good arguments for either of them, really.