Though the list was published almost two years ago and quite a number of those listed have since died (including centenerian Hoffmann), I reproduce it below:
| 1= | Albert Hoffman | (Swiss) | Chemist | 27 |
| 1= | Tim Berners-Lee | (British) | Computer Scientist | 27 |
| 3 | George Soros | (American) | Investor & Philanthropist | 25 |
| 4 | Matt Groening | (American) | Satirist & Animator | 24 |
| 5= | Nelson Mandela | (South African) | Politician & Diplomat | 23 |
| 5= | Frederick Sanger | (British) | Chemist | 23 |
| 7= | Dario Fo | (Italian) | Writer & Dramatist | 22 |
| 7= | Steven Hawking | (British) | Physicist | 22 |
| 9= | Oscar Niemeyer | (Brazilian) | Architect | 21 |
| 9= | Philip Glass | (American) | Composer | 21 |
| 9= | Grigory Perelman | (Russian) | Mathematician | 21 |
| 12= | Andrew Wiles | (British) | Mathematician | 20 |
| 12= | Li Hongzhi | (Chinese) | Spiritual Leader | 20 |
| 12= | Ali Javan | (Iranian) | Engineer | 20 |
| 15= | Brian Eno | (British) | Composer | 19 |
| 15= | Damian Hirst | (British) | Artist | 19 |
| 15= | Daniel Tammet | (British) | Savant & Linguist | 19 |
| 18 | Nicholson Baker | (American | Writer | 18 |
| 19 | Daniel Barenboim | (N/A) | Musician | 17 |
| 20= | Robert Crumb | (American) | Artist | 16 |
| 20= | Richard Dawkins | (British) | Biologist and philosopher | 16 |
| 20= | Larry Page & Sergey Brin | (American) | Publishers | 16 |
| 20= | Rupert Murdoch | (American) | Publisher | 16 |
| 20= | Geoffrey Hill | (British) | Poet | 16 |
| 25 | Garry Kasparov | (Russian) | Chess Player | 15 |
| 26= | The Dalai Lama | (Tibetan) | Spiritual Leader | 14 |
| 26= | Steven Spielberg | (American) | Film maker | 14 |
| 26= | Hiroshi Ishiguro | (Japanese) | Roboticist | 14 |
| 26= | Robert Edwards | (British) | Pioneer of IVF treatment | 14 |
| 26= | Seamus Heaney | (Irish) | Poet | 14 |
| 31 | Harold Pinter | (British) | Writer & Dramatist | 13 |
| 32= | Flossie Wong-Staal | (Chinese) | Bio-technologist | 12 |
| 32= | Bobby Fischer | (American) | Chess Player | 12 |
| 32= | Prince | (American) | Musician | 12 |
| 32= | Henryk Gorecki | (Polish) | Composer | 12 |
| 32= | Avram Noam Chomsky | (American) | Philosopher & linguist | 12 |
| 32= | Sebastian Thrun | (German) | Probabilistic roboticist | 12 |
| 32= | Nima Arkani Hamed | (Canadian) | Physicist | 12 |
| 32= | Margaret Turnbull | (American) | Astrobiologist | 12 |
| 40= | Elaine Pagels | (American) | Historian | 11 |
| 40= | Enrique Ostrea | (Philippino) | Pediatrics & neonatology | 11 |
| 40= | Gary Becker | (American) | Economist | 11 |
| 43= | Mohammed Ali | (American) | Boxer | 10 |
| 43= | Osama Bin Laden | (Saudi) | Islamicist | 10 |
| 43= | Bill Gates | (American) | Businessman | 10 |
| 43= | Philip Roth | (American) | Writer | 10 |
| 43= | James West | (American) | Invented the foil electrical microphone | 10 |
| 43= | Tuan Vo-Dinh | (Vietnamese) | Bio-Medical Scientist | 10 |
| 49= | Brian Wilson | (American) | Musician | 9 |
| 49= | Stevie Wonder | (American) | Singer songwriter | 9 |
| 49= | Vint Cerf | (American) | Computer scientist | 9 |
| 49= | Henry Kissinger | (American) | Diplomat and politician | 9 |
| 49= | Richard Branson | (British) | Publicist | 9 |
| 49= | Pardis Sabeti | (Iranian) | Biological anthropologist | 9 |
| 49= | Jon de Mol | (Dutch) | Television producer | 9 |
| 49= | Meryl Streep | (American) | Actress | 9 |
| 49= | Margaret Atwood | (Canadian) | Writer | 9 |
| 58= | Placido Domingo | (Spanish) | Singer | 8 |
| 58= | John Lasseter | (American) | Digital Animator | 8 |
| 58= | Shunpei Yamazaki | (Japanese) | Computer scientist & physicist | 8 |
| 58= | Jane Goodall | (British) | Ethologist & Anthropologist | 8 |
| 58= | Kirti Narayan Chaudhuri | (Indian) | Historian | 8 |
| 58= | John Goto | (British) | Photographer | 8 |
| 58= | Paul McCartney | (British) | Musician | 8 |
| 58= | Stephen King | (American) | Writer | 8 |
| 58= | Leonard Cohen | (Canadian) | Poet & musician | 8 |
| 67= | Aretha Franklin | (American) | Musician | 7 |
| 67= | David Bowie | (British) | Musician | 7 |
| 67= | Emily Oster | (American) | Economist | 7 |
| 67= | Steve Wozniak | (American) | Engineer and co-founder of Apple Computers | 7 |
| 67= | Martin Cooper | (American) | Inventor of the cell phone | 7 |
| 72= | George Lucas | (American) | Film maker | 6 |
| 72= | Nile Rogers | (American) | Musician (with Chic and producer) | 6 |
| 72= | Hans Zimmer | (German) | Composer | 6 |
| 72= | John Williams | (American) | Composer | 6 |
| 72= | Annette Baier | (New Zealander) | Philosopher | 6 |
| 72= | Dorothy Rowe | (British) | Psychologist | 6 |
| 72= | Ivan Marchuk | (Ukrainian) | Artist & sculptor | 6 |
| 72= | Robin Escovado | (American) | Composer | 6 |
| 72= | Mark Dean | (American) | Inventor & computer scientist | 6 |
| 72= | Rick Rubin | (American) | Musician & producer | 6 |
| 72= | Stan Lee | (American) | Publisher | 6 |
| 83= | David Warren | (Australian) | Engineer | 5 |
| 83= | Jon Fosse | (Norwegian) | Writer & dramatist | |
| 83= | Gjertrud Schnackenberg | (American) | Poet | 5 |
| 83= | Graham Linehan | (Irish) | Writer & dramatist | 5 |
| 83= | JK Rowling | (British) | Writer (Harry Potter) | 5 |
| 83= | Ken Russell | (British) | Film maker | 5 |
| 83= | Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov | (Russian) | Small arms designer | 5 |
| 83= | Erich Jarvis | (American) | Neurobiologist | 5 |
| 91= | Chad Varah | (British) | Founder of Samaritans | 4 |
| 91= | Nicolas Hayek | (Swiss) | Businessman and founder of Swatch | 4 |
| 91= | Alastair Hannay | (British) | Philosopher | 4 |
| 94= | Patricia Bath | (American) | Ophthalmologist | 3 |
| 94= | Thomas A. Jackson | (American) | Aerospace engineer | 3 |
| 94= | Dolly Parton | (American) | Singer | 3 |
| 94= | Morrissey | (British) | Singer and songwriter (The Smiths) | 3 |
| 94= | Michael Eavis | (British) | Organiser of Glastonbury | 3 |
| 94= | Ranulph Fiennes | (British) | Adventurer | 3 |
| 100. | Quentin Tarantino | (American) | Filmmaker | 2 |
All in all, the list can best be described as showing the potential problems with a whimsical public who might never have enough time to think clearly about how correct their choices are.
1 comment:
"The omission of Pope Benedict XVI, a man whom even his detractors know as exceptionally gifted intellectually, ought to lead people in Australia and "Red" America to realise they live in a different culture from Europe."
How absurd!
1. The idea that PBXVI is some incredibly intelligent man is entirely spread by the Catholic Church on the sole basis that he now happens to be Pope. He was a university professor, true, but not obviously different from the average.
2. Even if PBXVI had (say) some very high IQ, he has created very little of concrete benefit or popularity to the world, cf all the other musicians, inventors, artists, etc., in the list. The assertion, if there is one, that he has created some sort of new philosophy is exactly equivalent to the CCP declaring that Deng Xiaoping had created "Deng Xiaoping Thought" during his tenure as leader, when in fact he had only been utterly pragmatic.
3. A religious shouldn't be in the list. Apart from the falseness of their beliefs, if they claim to be a representative of some higher power, surely they are fundamentally a conduit rather than a creator? This means that it is irrelevant and bizarre to have Li Hongzhi in the list.
4. The conclusion drawn from the absence of PBXVI - namely that Europe is incredibly PC and Australia & red America otherwise - is absurd and there is no evidence for it. Especially since PBXVI is European and represents a specifically European religion!
Certain of the people in the list I would disagree with, and it could possibly be suggested that Solzhenitsyn could be included, but there would be no grounds for including PBXVI in any such list.
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