LIFE’s Top 100 People of the
Millenmium
(Rank) (Overall Rank)
Inventors
1 1 Thomas
Edison - Affordable incandescent lamp
2 15 Henry Ford - Revolutionized the assembly line; Maker
of Model T
3 17 Richard Arkwright - Water-powered spinning frame; founder
of modern factory system.
4 20 Orville & Wilber - Wright Powered airplane
5 27 Gugleilmo Marconi - Radio transmission
6 31 Alexandar G. Bell - Telephone
7 39 Samuel Morse - Telegraph
8 57 Nikola Tesla - Alternating Current (A.C.
power)
9 63 John Harrison - Marine Chronometer (longitude
calculation)
10 65 Hiram Maxim - Automatic machine gun
11 79 Louis Daguerre - Photography
12 81 Phineas T. Barnum - Traveling Circus (Greatest Show on
Earth)
Explorers
1 2 Christopher
Columbus - Discovery of North/South America
2 7 Ferdinand Magellan - Sailed around the World
3 14 Zheng He - Large scale expiditions
4 16 Sigmund Freud - Psychotherapy
5 37 Vasco da Gamma - Rounded Africa's Cape of Good
Hope
6 42 Hernan Cortez - Conquered the Aztecs
7 44 Ibn Battuta - 14th century cataloger
8 49 Marco Polo - Writings of Asia
9 68 Matteo Ricci - 16th Century Jesuit; Translated Euclid
into Chinese
10 82 Edwin Hubble - Discovery of Andromeda
galaxy
11 92 Jacques Cousteau - SCUBA; documentaries of ocean
life
Thinkers
1 3 Martin
Luther - Started the Reformation; Protestantism
2 10 Thomas Jefferson - Declaration of
Independence
3 18 Karl Marx - Co-wrote Communist Manifesto
4 24 James Madison - U.S. Constitution
5 26 Mary Wollstonecraft - Writings on Women's equality &
rights
6 32 Rene De Cartes - Analytic geometry; Cartesian method;
"I think, therefore I am"
7 34 Thomas Aquinas - Treaties on Faith and
Reason
8 40 John Calvin - Writings on religious reform;
Calvinism
9 45 Zhu Xi - Neo-Confucian writings
10 47 John Locke - Legislative representation; free
speech; rights: life, liberty, propety
11 52 Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Writings on educational
development: emotion vs logic
12 58 Immanuel Kant - Wrote "Critique of Pure Reason":
nature/limits of human knowledge; effectively ended the Age of Enlightment
13 71 Ibn-Sina - Wrote medical encyclopedia
14 72 Simone De Beauvoir - Wrote feminist book: "The Second
Sex"
15 74 Adam Smith - Wrote "An Inquiry into the Nature &
Causes of the Wealth of Nation"; advocated open competition, free markets
16 87 Theodor Herzl - Started movement to create Jewish
state.
17 98 Ibn-Khaldun - Wrote of Muslim history; 14th century
Tunisian diplomat
Discoverers
1 4 Galileo
Galilei - Laws of inertia, falling bodies; confirmed Copernicus
2 6 Isaac Newton - Laws of motion, gravity,
calculus
3 8 Louis Pasteur - Pasteurization; germ theory;
immunology
4 9 Charles Darwin - Theory of evolution and natural
selection
5 19 Nicolaus Copernicus - Heilocentric view of the
universe
6 21 Albert Einstein - Theory of relativity; quantum theory of
light; E=MC2
7 43 Joseph Lister - Carbolic acid as antiseptic; made surgery less
risky
8 46 Gregor Mendel - Prediction of hybrids;
fundamentals of genetics.
9 53 Niels Bohr - Quantum theory
10 70 Michael Faraday - Laws of magnetic fields
and electric currents
11 75 Marie Curie - Radioactivity (she coined the
word)
12 80 Antoine Lavoisier - Fundamentals of chemistry: combustion
& compounds
13 92 Roger Bannister - Broke the 4 minute mile
14 94 John von Neumann - Digital computer; Hydrogen bomb; game
theory
15 95 Santiago Ramon y Cajal - Fundamentals of
neuorscience
16 100 Carolus Linnaeus - Botanical classification
system
Creators
1 5 Leonardo da
Vinci - Renaissance Icon; created Mona Lisa, The Last Supper
2 11 William Shakespeare - 38 plays; 154 sonnets; Significant
Comdies & Traedies
3 33 Ludwig van Beethoven - Expanded the sonata, quartet,
concerto & symphony
4 36 Michelangelo - Created statue David; painting:
ceiling of the Sistine Chapel
5 50 Dante Alighieri - Wrote "Divine Comedy"
6 59 Fan Kuan - Taoist painter of "Travels Amid
Streams and Mountains"
7 62 Guido of Arezzo - 5-line staff of sheet
music
8 67 Cao Xueqin - Wrote "Dream of the Red Chamber",
China’s great novel
9 69 Louis Armstrong - Improvisational jazz
trumpeter; "scatting" sining; Int'l ambassador
10 73 Jalal Ad-Din Rumi - Composed passionate love poems; helped
to spread Islam
11 76 Andrea Palladio - Wrote "Four Books of
Architecture"; created the Portico
12 78 Pablo Picasso - Cubism; Innovations in
sculpture, lithography
13 84 Raphael - Inspired 16th century Italian art;
fresco: Galatea
14 86 Hokusai - Japanese master painter;
"Thirty-six View of Mount Fuji"
15 89 Claudio Monteverdi - Opera: "The Coronation of
Poppea"
16 90 Walt Disney - Mickey Mouse; "Snow White";
Disneyland
17 93 Leo Tolstoy - Wrote "Anna Karenina", "War and
Peace"
Leaders
1 12 Napoleon Bonaparte - Founder of the Modern State; military
strategy/tractics
2 13 Adolf Hitler - Chancellor of Germany (1932); Started
WWII
3 22 Mohandas Gandhi - Non-violent, non-cooperation strategy:
Satyagraha
4 23 Kublai Khan - 13th Century conquest of China;
grandson of Genghis Khan
5 25 Simon Bolivar - Emancipator of Columbia, Venezuela,
Ecuador, Peru, Boliva
6 28 Mao Zedong - Long March of 1939; People's Republic
Party
7 29 Vladimir Lenin - Led 1917 Bolshevik revolution
against the Czar
8 30 Martin Luther King Jr. - Led Civil Rights movement;
birthday is National holiday
9 35 Abraham Lincoln - Emancipation Proclamation; ends
slavery in U.S.
10 38 Suleyman the Magnificent - Sultan; Expanded Ottoman
Empire
11 41 Florence Nightingale - Established 1st school for nurses;
improved hospitals
12 48 Akbar - Muslim Mughal emperor of India
13 51 John D. Rockefeller - 1st billionaire; started Standard
Oil Co.
14 54 Joan of Arc - Led the French to victories in the 100
Years War; Named a saint.
15 55 Frederick Douglass - Self-made intellectual; decried the
bigotry of a slave society
16 56 Louis XIV - King of France - the Sun King; Palace of
Versailles
17 60 Otto Von Bismarck - "Iron" Chancellor of Germany; Unified
Prussia & other Ger. States
18 61 William the Conqueror - Started England by winning the
Battle of Hastings
19 64 Pope Innocent III - 4th Lateran Council - large
influence on Catholic Church
20 66 Jane Adams - Founded Chicago's Hull House for
immigrants; A.C.L.U.
21 77 Peter the Great - Modernized Russia; reformer +
despot
22 83 Susan B. Anthony Early campaigner for women's
suffrage.
23 85 Helen Keller - Deaf, blind, mute disability; Graduated -
honors from Radcliffe.
24 88 Elizabeth I - Queen of England: 45-year span of
growth & achievement
25 91 Nelson Mandela - Fought against apartheid; President
of So. Africa; 25yrs. Prison
26 97 Catherine de Medicis Queen of France - mother to 3
French Kings; astute politician
27 99 Kwame Nkrumah - Won Ghana's independence from
Britain; triggered decolonization
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