INTRODUCTION

In his book Letters on the English, Voltaire relates that during his stay in England, in 1726, he overheard some learned men discussing the question: who was the greatest man@Caesar, Alexander, Tamerlane, or Cromwell? One speaker maintained that Sir Isaac Newton was beyond a doubt the greatest man. Voltaire agreed with this judgment, for: "It is to him who masters our minds by the force of truth, and not to those who enslave them
by violence, that we owe our reverence."
Whether Voltaire was truly convinced that Sir Isaac Newton was the greatest man who ever lived or was simply trying to make a philosophical point, the anecdote raises an interesting question: of the billions of human beings who have populated the earth, which persons have most influenced the course of history?
This book presents my own answer to that question, my list of the 100 persons in history whom I believe to have been the most influential. I must emphasize that this is a list of the most influential persons in history, not a list of the greatest. For example, there is room in my list for an enormously influential, wicked, and heartless man like Stalin, but no place at all for the saintly Mother Cabrini.
This book is solely involved with the question of who werethe 100 persons who had the greatest effect on history and on the course of the world. I have ranked these 100 persons in order of importance: that is, according to the total amount of influence that each of them had on human history and on the everyday
lives of other human beings. Such a group of exceptional people, whether noble or reprehensible, famous or obscure, flamboyant or modest, cannot fail to be interesting; they are the people who have shaped our lives and formed our world. Before composing such a catalogue, it is necessary to formulate the ground rules as to who is eligible for inclusion and or what basis. The first rule is that only real persons are eligible foi consideration. That rule is sometimes difficult to apply; for example, did the Chinese sage Lao Tzu actually exist, or is he merely a legendary figure? How about Homer? How about Aesop, the putative author of the famous Aesop's Fables? In cases such as these, where the facts are uncertain, I have been obliged to make a guess@an educated guess, I trust@based on the information available.
Anonymous persons are also disqualified. Obviously the individual who invented the wheel@if indeed the wheel was invented by a single person@was a very influential figure, probably far more important than most of the people listed in this book. However, under the rules that I postulate, that individual, along with the inventor of writing, and all the other anonymous benefactors of the human race, has been excluded from consideration.
In composing this list, I have not simply selected the most famous or prestigious figures in history. Neither fame, nor talent, nor nobility of character is the same thing as influence. Thus, Benjamin Franklin, Martin Luther King, Jr., Babe Ruth, and even Leonardo da Vinci are omitted from this list@although some find a place among the Honorable Mentions that follow the One Hundred. On the other hand, influence is not always exerted benevolently; thus, an evil genius such as Hitler meets the criteria for inclusion.
Since the influence with which we are concerned must be averaged over the world at large, the names of many outstanding political figures whose influence was primarily local are absent. However, a significant impact on one important country is equivalent to a less commanding influence affecting the entire earth; thus, Peter the Great of Russia, whose influence extended Drimarily to his own country, appears on my list.
I have not confined my list to persons who have affected the iresent situation of mankind. Influence on past generations was aken equally into account.
What about the future? In ranking the men and women in this book, I considered the influence that their accomplishments may have on future generations and events. Since our knowledge of the future is severely limited, it is obvious I could not estimate continued influence with anything approaching certitude. Nevertheless, it seems safe to predict that electricity, for example, will still be important 500 years from now, and the contributions of such scientists as Faraday and Maxwell will therefore continue to affect the daily lives of our remote descendants.
In deciding exactly where to place an individual, I gave much weight to the importance of the historical movement to which he contributed. Generally speaking, major historical developments are never due to the actions of one person alone. Because this book is concerned with ijidividual, personal influence, I have tried to divide the credit for a given development in proportion to each participant's contribution. Individuals, therefore, are not ranked in the same order as would be the important events or movements with which they are associated. Sometimes a person who is almost exclusively responsible for a significant event or movement has been ranked higher than one who played a less dominant role in a more important movement.
A striking example of this is my ranking Muhammad higher than Jesus, in large part because of my belief that Muhammad had a much greater personal influence on the formulation of the Moslem religion than Jesus had on the formulation of the Christian religion. This does not imply, of course, that I think Muhammad was a greater man than Jesus.
There are some important developments to which a large number of persons contributed, but in which no one individual was of overriding importance. A good illustration is the development of explosives and firearms; another is the women's liberation movement; still another is the rise and evolution of Hinduism. Although each of these developments is of major importance, if credit were apportioned among the many contributors, no one person would qualify for inclusion on this list.
Would it then be advisable to choose a representative individual for each of these developments, and to accord that person all of the credit? I think not. Under such a procedure, the Hindu philosopher Sankara would appear near the top of the list as a representative of Hinduism. But Sankara himself is neither particularly famous@he is virtually unknown outside India@noroutstandingly influential. Similarly, it would strike me as frivolous to rank Richard Gatling, the inventor of an early model of machine gun, higher than Albert Einstein, purely on the grounds that the evolution of firearms was more important than the for mulation of the theory of relativity. In all such cases, I have decided not to try to choose a "first among equals." Each person included in this book has been selected on the basis of his or her actual influence, rather than as a representative of an important movement.
Where two individuals, in close collaboration, have produced what is essentially a joint accomplishment, a special rule has been adopted. For example, Orville and Wilbur Wright worked so closely together in inventing the airplane that it is nearly impossible to separate their individual contributions. In this case, it seems pointless to attempt to ascertain the proportion of credit due to each man, and then to assign each man a separate place on the list. Instead, the two men have been treated as a joint entry.
Like the Wright brothers, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels share a chapter, although it is headed only by the name of Marx, whom I consider the more important of the two. A few other joint contributors have been treated in the same fashion. Let me stress that this rule about joint entry does not apply to persons who merely worked in the same general field, but only to close collaborators.
There is one other factor, which it has been suggested, should be considered in determining an individual's place on this list. In retrospect, we can see that if Guglielmo Marconi had not invented the radio, some other person would have done so within a few years. Similarly, it seems likely that Mexico would have been conquered by Spain even had Hernando Cortes never existed, and that the theory of evolution would have been for mulated without Charles Darwin. But these accomplishments were actually carried out by Marconi, Cortes, and Darwin, respectively. These three men have therefore been ranked on this list in accordance with their achievements, and the argument that "it would have happened anyway" has been disregarded.
On the other hand, a few rare people were responsible for important events that might never have occurred without them. In assessing and ranking these people@an oddly-mixed group whose members include Genghis Khan, Beethoven, Muham mad, and William the Conqueror@their particular achievements have been assigned greater weight, because these individuals have been personally influential in the profoundest sense of the term.
Of the tens of billions of individuals who have inhabited the world, fewer than one in a million is listed in a large biographical dictionary. Of the perhaps twenty thousand individuals whose achievements have merited mention in biographical dictionaries, only about one-half of one percent are included on this list. Thus, every person on this list, in my opinion, is one of the truly monumental figures of history.
The influence of women on human affairs, as well as the contributions that females have made to human civilization, is obviously far greater than might be indicated by their numbers in this list. But a galaxy of influential figures will naturally be composed of individuals who had both the talent and the opportunity to exert a great influence. Throughout history, women have generally been denied such opportunities, and my inclusion of only two females is simply a reflection of that regrettable truth. I see no point in trying to cover up the disagreeable fact of discrimination by adding a few token women to my list. This book is based on what actually did occur in the past; not on what should have occurred, or on what might have occurred had human institutions been more equitable. Similar observations might be made concerning various racial or ethnic groups whose members have been disadvantaged in the past.
I have stressed that influence has been the sole criterion in ranking the individuals in this compendium. It would, of course, be possible to construct lists of "outstanding persons," based on other criteria, such as fame, prestige, talent, versatility, and nobility of character.
You, the reader, are urged to experiment by composing your own list@whether it be of the most influential, or of the most outstanding, or of otherwise superlative personages in any particular field. I have found the creation of this book on the one hundred most influential figures both fascinating and entertaining, and I am confident that you, too, will enjoy the intellectual exercise of assembling your own list or lists. Your list of names will not and need not coincide with mine. You may prefer to ponder, for example, the one hundred most powerful individuals who ever lived, or the one hundred most charismatic characters. But should you choose to nominate the most influential figures, I hope the exercise will open up for you, as it did for me, a new
perspective on history.