influential people in history
Influential People in History
Certain people have shaped the world with their contributions to the various spheres of life. The article below presents a list of some of the most influential people in history.
There have been many people in history, who have changed the world with their thoughts, inventions, political contribution, and even by their thoughts. This following list of the most important people in history that will help you learn about those who shaped the world. Here is the list of 100 most influential people in history who have made some major impact on the lives of the human race.
List of Top Influential People
Muhammad ― Prophet of Islam and conqueror of Arabia.
Sir Isaac Newton ― A physicist who put forth the theory of universal gravitation and laws of motion.
Jesus Christ ― The founder of Christianity.
Buddha ― The prince who went in search of enlightenment and become the founder of Buddhism.
Confucius ― The Chinese philosopher who is known as the founder of Confucianism.
St. Paul ― The proselytizer of Christianity.
Cai Lun ― The inventor of paper.
Johann Gutenberg ― German printer who invented the mechanical printing press.
Christopher Columbus ― Italian navigator, colonizer and explorer who introduced the lands of America to the Europeans.
Albert Einstein ― German theoretical physicist, who gave the general and special relativity. More specifically mass-energy equivalence, expressed by the equation E = mc2.
Louis Pasteur ― He is known for the process of milk sterilization called pasteurization.
Galileo Galilei ― The founder of modern science who accurately described heliocentric solar system.
Nelson Mandela ― The first South African president who was elected in fully representative democratic election. He spent 24 years in jail, as he led the movement against apartheid.
Euclid Platonism ― A Greek mathematician who is known for Euclidian geometry.
Moses ― The Prophet of Judaism.
Charles Darwin ― The biologist who described Darwinian theory of evolution.
Shih Huang Ti ― A Chinese emperor who took power in 221 B.C.E and molded the China of today.
Augustus Caesar ― He was the adopted son of Julius Caesar. He became the first ruler of the Roman Empire. He ruled the Roman Empire single-handedly from January 27 BC until his death in AD 14.
Nicolaus Copernicus ― An astronomer who put forth the theory of heliocentricity.
Antoine Laurent Lavoisier ― The father of modern chemistry who was also a philosopher and economist.
Constantine ― The great Roman emperor who completely legalized Christianity, leading to its status as state religion.
James Watt ― The man who developed steam engine.
Michael Faraday ― A chemist who discovery of magneto-electricity.
James Clerk Maxwell ― The man who gave electromagnetic spectrum.
Martin Luther King Jr. ― An American clergyman, and the leader of the African-American civil rights movement. He is a human rights icon and recognized as a martyr by two Christian churches.
George Washington ― The first president of United States.
Karl Marx ― The founder of Marxism.
Orville and Wilbur Wright ― The brothers who invented the airplane.
Genghis Khan ― The Mongol conqueror.
Adam Smith ― The Theory of Moral Sentiments.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi ― The pioneer of 'satyagraha' or the non-violence movement who led India to achieve independence from the British rule. He is known as the 'Great Soul' and is known as the Father of the Nation in India. Mahatma Gandhi's birthday on 2nd October is celebrated as the International Day of Non-Violence.
John Dalton Quaker ― A chemist who gave the atomic theory, law of partial pressures called Dalton's law.
Alexander the Great ― The Greek conqueror of the world, who invaded and defeated Persia, Syria, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and India.
Napoleon Bonaparte ― The Emperor of the French, a military and political leader of France who shaped the early 19th century European politics.
Thomas Edison ― The inventor of light bulb, phonograph.
Antony van Leeuwenhoek ― The father of microbiology and the first microbiologist ever.
William T. G. Morton ― The pioneer of anesthesiology.
Guglielmo Marconi ― The inventor of radio.
Adolf Hitler ― The totalitarian leader of Germany who is known for the genocide of Jewish, Romani and other people for what is known as the Holocaust.
Plato ― The Greek philosopher who is founder of Platonism.
Oliver Cromwell ― The British political and military leader.
Alexander Graham Bell ― The inventor of telephone.
Alexander Fleming ― The inventor of penicillin.
John Locke ― The father of Liberalism.
Kaoru Ishikawa ― The Japanese professor who influenced quality management in North America and is known for the Ishikawa or cause and effect diagram or the fish bone diagram for industrial process.
Werner Heisenberg ― The founder of quantum mechanics and known for asserting the uncertainty principle of quantum theory.
Louis Daguerre ― The inventor and pioneer of photography.
Simon Bolivar ― He is the Atheist National hero of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia.
Rene Descartes ― A philosopher and mathematician.
Michelangelo ― The most famous Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect.
Pope Urban II ― He called for First Crusade.
James Watson and Francis Crick ― They were the first to propose the double helix structure of DNA molecule in 1953.
Asoka ― The king of India who converted to and spread Buddhism after witnessing the mass deaths at the war of Kalinga.
Indira Gandhi ― The first woman Prime Minister of India, also known as the Iron Lady of India.
William Harvey ― The man who described the circulation of blood, wrote essays on the Generation of Animals and the basis for modern embryology.
Ernest Rutherford ― A physicist and pioneer of subatomic physics who gave the Rutherford model of an atom.
John Calvin ― The founder of Calvinism.
Gregor Mendel ― He is known for Mendel's laws of genetics.
Max Planck ― A physicist who is considered the founder of quantum theory and most important physicists of the 20th century.
Joseph Lister Quaker ― The principal discoverer of antiseptics, which greatly reduced surgical mortality.
Nikolaus August Otto ― He built the first four-stroke internal combustion engine.
Francisco Pizarro ― The Spanish conqueror in South America who defeated the Incas.
Hernando Cortes ― He conquered Mexico for Spain through war and introduced smallpox from European that largely destroyed Aztec civilization.
Thomas Jefferson ― The 3rd president of United States.
Queen Isabella I ― The Queen of Castile and Leon who along with her husband Ferdinand II of Aragon bought stability to both kingdoms that lead to the unification of Spain as a nation.
Joseph Stalin ― Marxism revolutionary and ruler of USSR.
Julius Caesar ― Roman emperor.
William the Conqueror ― The man who laid foundation of modern England.
Sigmund Freud ― He put forth the Freudian psychology/ psychoanalysis and founded Freudian school of psychology/ psychoanalysis.
Edward Jenner ― The man who discoverer of the vaccination for smallpox.
Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen ― He discovered X-rays.
Margret Thatcher ― The only woman who became the Prime Minister of United Kingdom and the Leader of the Conservative Party.
Lao Tzu ― Founder of Taoism.
Voltaire ― A French Enlightenment writer, essayist and philosopher.
Johannes Kepler ― An astronomer who gave eponymous laws of planetary motions.
Enrico Fermi ― Father of atom bomb.
Leonhard Euler ― The greatest mathematician of the 18th century.
Aung San Suu Kyi ― She is a Burmese opposition politician and General Secretary of the National League for Democracy. She has been under house arrest in Myanmar for almost 14 years in the past 20 years.
Nicoli Machiavelli ― The writer of the influential political treatise 'The Prince'.
Benazir Butto ― She became the first woman Prime Minister of Pakistan, a Muslim state.
John F. Kennedy ― The U.S. President who led first successful effort by humans to travel to the moon.
Gregory Pincus ― An endocrinologist who developed birth-control pill.
Mani Manicheanism ― The founder of Manicheanism that was once a world religion, which rivaled Christianity in strength.
Lenin ― A Communist Russian ruler.
Sui Wen Ti ― The founder and first emperor of the Sui Dynasty.
Vasco da Gama ― He discovered the route from Europe to India around Cape Hood.
Cyrus the Great ― The Zoroastrianism founder of Persian empire.
Peter the Great ― The man who forged Russia into a great European nation.
Mao Zedong ― The founder of Maoism, a form of Communism.
Francis Bacon ― He delineated inductive scientific method.
Henry Ford ― The man who became American founder of Ford Motor Company and father of modern assembly lines used in mass production.
President Barack Obama ― He is the current and the first African-American to who became the President of the United States of America.
Zoroaster Zoroastrianism ― The founder of Zoroastrianism.
Queen Elizabeth I ― She restored Church of England to power after Queen Mary.
Mikhail Gorbachev ― The Orthodox Russian premier who helped end Communism in USSR.
Menes ― He unified Upper and Lower Egypt.
Charlemagne ― He is today known as the founding father of French and German empire and as the Father of Europe.
Homer ― The Greek epic poet.
Justinian I ― The Roman emperor who reconquered Mediterranean empire and accelerated the Catholic-Monophysite schism.
Mahavira ― The founder of Jainism.
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