<p>So.....any ideas? Imo, Einstein, Oprah, Steve Nash, Bill Gates, Hillary</p>
<p>Lil' John. :)</p>
<p>Oprah? Surely not... Same for Hillary, and Nash.</p>
<p>That's a heavily Americanized list you have there.</p>
<p>I'd go: Hitler, Einstein, Gates, Gandhi, Lenin, and probably Tim Berns-Lee</p>
<p>FDR
MLK
Mao
Gorbachev
etc</p>
<p>Hillary is a no.</p>
<p>Hitler, Einstein, FDR, Churchill, Khomeini ... 4 good guys, 1 bad guy....</p>
<p>Nelson Mandela, Princess Diana, Mother Theresa, Mao Tse-w/e the rest of his name is, Charles de Gaulle, Babe Ruth, the Beatles, Jackie Robinson</p>
<p>I'd say Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Mao Zedong, FDR, Tim Berners-Lee. Along those lines.</p>
<p>Babe Ruth?</p>
<p>What about my buddy Churchill? Feynman, Hawking?</p>
<p>Hitler, Einstein, Gates, Gandhi, Lenin, george lucas (lol, he has his own religion),
FDR, Tupac.</p>
<p>Hillary? As in Clinton? 20th century? No way.</p>
<p>Adolf Hitler
Mao Zedong
Mahatma Gandhi
Nelson Mandela
Winston Churchill
Albert Einstein</p>
<p>george w. bush</p>
<p>MLK, FDR, Churchill, Walt Disney</p>
<p>Aren't you about 7 years late asking this question?</p>
<p>^^Bush wasn't very influential in the 20th century. Not at all, in fact.</p>
<p>Well, obviously the most important people from my frame of reference would be Mom, Dad, my friends, my enemies, my teachers...
:D</p>
<p>=] I am tempted to say Rand.</p>
<p>...because people are viciously opinionated about her, one way or the other.</p>
<p>But because she hasn't actively effected political change, aside from the creation of the modern libertarian party, I can't say too much.</p>
<p>charles lindbergh, marie curie, hitler, lenin, stalin, wilson, truman, lbj, fdr, teddy roosevelt, jfk, nixon, marie curie, henry ford, pope john xxiii, pope john paul ii, mother teresa, eisenhower, mao zedong, gorbachev, de gaulle, gandhi, nelson mandela, ayatollah khomeini, mlk jr, margaret sanger, wright brothers, sigmund freud, walt disney, bill gates, jonas salk, watson and crick, picasso, bill haley, elvis presley, the beatles, charlie chaplin, john dewey, jackie robinson.</p>
<p>Anyways, I'm inclined to dispute some of the scientists (nothing against Andrea's post - the below scientists are often mentioned in other lists of 20th century people who really changed the world).</p>
<p>Why is that?</p>
<p>-because IF scientist A wasn't accredited with discovery B, then another scientist C would have made discovery B in a few years, according to how things would have gone.</p>
<p>Dispute #1: Watson and Crick (haha)</p>
<p>There were three teams for the search of the structure of DNA (originally put double helix - but that's a retrospective phrase :p). Wilkins/Franklin, Watson/Crick, and Linus Pauling. Even Watson acknowledged that the structure of the double helix would have been discovered within a few years of 1953 were it not for the Watson/Crick team. Rosalind Franklin's infamous pictures would have been already made, regardless. And Watson's bio mentions that he barely did any research after his DNA discovery. Now Crick, I admire more, since he continued in molecular genetics, and switched to neuroscience. Still, others probably did more.</p>
<p>Dispute #2: Marie Curie</p>
<p>Marie Curie was my former role model. I LOVED her biography. She studied SO hard in college - slept for very few hours each day, and eliminated virtually every distraction so that she could continue to study. However, the discovery of polonium and radium would have come irrespective of her presence (though they may have been delayed by a few years were it not for her). Of course, she proved an inspiration for future females, but were it not for Curie, someone else would have supplanted her image as the prototypical female scientist. Or would someone else have? Chien-Shiung Wu and Emmy Noether never won Nobels. There are other female Nobels, but not many. Also, her second Nobel wasn't really for any additional work (but she was having a very tough time due to the Langevin scandal and was contemplating suicide). Hmm..hard to say..</p>
<p>Nonetheless, I think that were it not for Einstein, perhaps science would have been delayed by a long time. Yes, Poincaire anticipated many of his ideas. Were it not for him - would a research team have discovered relativity? Or would another genius come up with it? Such a discovery would have been inevitable, but for how long? And of course, Einstein's idiosyncracies...</p>
<p>Nonetheless, the massive publicity for such discoveries is excellent motivation. ^^</p>
<p>Stephen Colbert because he practically defined political humor and Democrats have been cautioned to appear on his show in an effort to avoid possible humiliation. Haha, funny how things have gotten so serious.</p>
<p>^he'd be 21st centry</p>
<p>I want to say TR because he set the pace for American politics for 100 years. You can't really be influential if you came at the tail end of the century.</p>